This week’s portion of the ACE Report touched on a topic that has been the “hot button” topic in higher education in recent years and how it is certainly relevant to the success of international higher education programs around the world. This topic is assessment: how do countries or institutions show that international higher education programs and policies are actually achieving the outcomes and objectives they claim to achieve. Organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recent made it clear that assessing learning and outcomes should be a global effort. As higher education expands beyond national boarders, it is important to identify what we want students to get from studying or living abroad and what quality of education they are receiving. As the director for education and skills of OECD states “Unless we measure learning outcomes, judgements about the quality of teaching and learning at higher education institutions will continue to be made on the basis of flawed international rankings, derived not from outcomes, not even outputs—but from idiosyncratic inputs and reputation surveys”.
The assessment of international higher education learning objectives should require more than just simply counting the number of students in international programs or leaving the country. Assessment should involve assessing the promises of having an international education, such as cultural understanding and job marketability. As we discussed in class, education abroad constantly promises that these experiences help the student develop their soft-skills, which would make them more desirable in a competitive and globalized job market. Like the report states, measuring the effectiveness of the long-term goals of international higher education is more difficult because these goals involve intangible variables that are difficult to measure and they require more studies that expand over time and countries. However, it can be done and it is necessary that institutions and countries to do these assessments.
I believe that conducting these assessments and having the information to back up what international higher education promises will allow it to expand and to grow as an essential part of education, especially in the US. Without assessment and its findings all those promises about how great international higher education is for students are just empty claims to potential students and their parents. As skepticism about US higher education and it value increases along with its price, parents and students need to be won over with solid data from assessment in order to be sold on international higher education. Students and their parents need to be able to see the end results and outcomes for programs and how it benefits the student before investing in it.
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for your thoughtful post! I am most intrigued by the concept of assessment and its capabilities/challenges in Higher Ed, so I particularly enjoyed reading your reply to this week’s readings. I am in complete agreement that in todays competitive educational sphere, it is so important for institutions to be able to provide hard data to students and their families in order to prove their value. Something that I find interesting (and difficult) is that although there may eventually be more data and statistics about the value of international learning, I believe that it may have changed by the time the assessment results become available! Because the international education field is so dynamic and constantly evolving, I wonder if the assessment data we are collecting today will even be relevant by the time it is analyzed and released to the public. With this in mind, I think this causes a need for research methods to be simplified as much as possible in order to expedite this process. I also hope that new technologies aid in getting this information formulated as quickly as possible.
Warm Regards,
Melissa Parsowith
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for your post. I was also a bit discouraged to read about the heavy reliance on quantitative data that measures basic outputs, such as the number of participants, simply because of the ease and convenience of gathering that data. The big intangible impacts of programs are much more difficult to collect and measure. When I first read about the qualitative analyses of program impacts, which are costly and time-intensive to gather and analyze, I thought of promotional materials on an institutional level. My university promoted its own exchange programs using success stories from former students, which I found to be very effective. The trouble is that collecting this comprehensive feedback about policy effectiveness with widespread participation on a national level over many years is a significant investment of time and resources.
Kristen
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for your post! Assessing the benefits of internationalization and study abroad is definitely tricky. Quantitative data is important, but it definitely does not tell the whole story. I think universities should strive for quality experiences, over the quantity of students they send abroad. While I was fortunate to have a very immersive experience when I studied abroad, many of my peers were not so lucky. The most common critique of study abroad — at least from an American standpoint — is that American students stick together while abroad and have very little contact with the host country’s residents. Part of this might be a cultural thing — it’s easiest to associate yourself with those you are already familiar with. But I also think it’s a direct result of the structure and curriculum of many American study abroad programs. Many people I spoke to took classes with only Americans. Their programs also planned excursions for the group consisting of only Americans, and the housing situation was in dorms with other Americans. With program structures like this, it makes an immerse experience almost impossible for students.
So rather than looking at numbers that show the amount of students studying abroad, perhaps a better way to access the impact and benefits of internationalization would be to analyze the program structures to see how much the programs encourage students to interact with the local population.
Thanks Kristen, Melissa and Jen for the comments, this is a topic that has grown significantly in higher ed. Indeed the field of international higher education is always changing, but the outcomes and promises stay the same. So, it is important to assess how many job offers abroad did students after a study abroad, or how much their cultural awareness go up by etc. . Of course not everything can be assigned a number, so qualitative research and data is a must since many programs promise the development of soft skills. But, i think the most important thing is that institutions need to have assessment mechanisms in place for these programs and not just assume that living in a country leads to X in a student.