Task Force on Standardized Reporting on U.S. Undergraduate Study Abroad Students at British Universities

The following is a brief historical note from the Bury Book International Education Library & Archive:

This Task Force, appointed in 1984, consisted of members from the Admission Section (ADSEC) and the Section on U.S. Students Abroad (SECUSSA) of NAFSA and members from the British Universities Transatlantic Exchange Committee (BUTEC).  Despite previous collaboration between NAFSA and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) on the ANTFOSA Evaluation Guide in 1977, AACRAO was not a part of this project.  The Committee on Study Abroad by United States Students (SAUSS) of AACRAO did, however, endorse the Guidelines Toward Standardized Reporting for Study Abroad established by this inter-organizational Task Force.  (Rex & Roberts, 1988)

Rex, D., & Roberts, T. (Eds.).  (1988).  Recording the Performance of U.S. Undergraduates at British Institutions: Guidelines Toward Standardized Reporting for Study Abroad.  Washington, D.C.:  National Association for Foreign Student Affairs.

The Consultative Service on United States Undergraduate Study Abroad

Frequent IHEC Blog readers know that I am very interested in the history of international education and in particular here in the United States.  The following is a snippet from my research notes on the history of outcomes assessment, program evaluation and standards of good practice in study abroad that I thought I would share here on IHEC Blog:


The Consultative Service on United States Undergraduate Study Abroad was a coordinating venture of the Association of American Colleges, the Council on Student Travel, the Experiment in International Living, and the Institute of International Education.  It was formed in the spring of 1963 with a grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.   Its objectives were:  (1) to secure full and precise information on international education, (2) to coordinate the rapidly proliferating ventures of United States educational institutions for undergraduate study abroad, (3) to ease communication and cooperation between institutions, and (4) to establish the basis for determining standards which will evaluate undergraduate study abroad programs.

Institute of International Education:  Undergraduate Study Abroad, Report of the Consulate Service on U.S. Undergraduate Study Abroad (New York:  The Institute, 1964).

Speakman, C.E.  (1966).  International Exchange in Education.  New York:  Center for Applied Research in Education.  pp. 71-72

Those of You Interested in the History of Standards of Good Practice in Education Abroad

Very busy week for me this week with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program 2011-2012 competition in full swing and revision work on my dissertation survey instrument so I thought I would embed this bibliography I compiled and host over on Scribd.  The following bibliography is just over two years old and was compiled for publication in the Standards of Good Practice of The Forum on Education Abroad, 3rd edition (2008) which you can download here.  There are some great resources here and some historical documents for those of you, like me, that enjoy the history of international education.History of Standards of Good Practice in Education Abroad Bibliography by Comp, 2008

The Importance of Creating Standards to Evaluate Master’s Programs in International Education - NAFSA Collegial Conversation

I'm posting the following with permission of Yating Chang, Network Leader of the NAFSA International Education Leader Development Network, as I think several IHEC Blog readers may find this upcoming conversation to be of interest:

International Education is a wonderful career field to be in! Are you thinking of attaining a Master's degree? What are some of the available programs in the country? What about quality of these programs?

Join IELD network's online discussion session
December 17, 2009
4-5pm EST
Be online and conduct LIVE conversation with David Urias, School of Education, Drexel University.
Be free to ask questions and provide your thoughts about this topic.

COLLEGIAL CONVERSATION:
NAFSA Collegial Conversation: The Importance of Creating Standards to Evaluate Master’s Programs in International Education

By David Urias, Ph.D., Drexel University

Everything depends on the quality of the experience which is had.
~ John Dewey

Over the past two decades, programmatic guidelines for undergraduate international education at U.S. colleges and universities have been presented by several national associations and several academic disciplines. However, none of these groups has ventured into the area of suggesting comparable guidelines at the graduate level. It should be noted that in the past, senior level leaders in international education came up through the ranks of faculty and now the trend is toward a more professionalized administrative corps, i.e., a greater professionalization and specialized graduate degree is needed. Professionals in international education - whether from a more theoretical or practical orientation - need to be concerned about the quality and availability of what is being taught at the graduate level. Graduates of these programs are most likely to enter either the academic or practitioner side of the profession. They are our colleagues of the future.

It is both exciting and unsettling that new educational models and means of delivering educational programs and services are evolving at all levels of higher education. One of the myriad of complex challenges facing American higher education is to develop standards and benchmarks for newly emerging professions, including global, international, and comparative education, which have arisen in an era of transition and globalization. Standards provide policymakers, educators, parents, students, and the public with the means to monitor, measure, and continuously improve student achievement and college/university program quality.

A major value of graduate standards is that they provide criteria by which an academic program can judge its educational effectiveness. Whether used for accreditation or program development purposes, standards provide faculty, staff, administrators, and students alike a tool to measure a program’s characteristics against a set of well-conceived criteria designed to ensure educational quality and efficacy. Knowing exactly what a program is expected to do makes it more likely stakeholders will mobilize their energies to meet those expectations and provide the means for potential students to make appropriate decisions concerning their future study objectives. The standards/benchmark criteria do not have to constitute a precise set of indicators to be applied rigidly in assessing all such programs. Rather, they are the dimensions that should be considered in reviewing and guiding existing and planned international education programmatic activities.

Photo credit: austinevan

Very Early Years of Standards of Good Practice in U.S. Study Abroad Programs

As many IHEC Blog readers know, I’m very interested in the history of international educational exchange with a primary focus on mobility of students and scholars to and from the United States. I recently came across some of my research notes for my chapter “Assessment of and Standards for Study Abroad” that I co-authored for the forthcoming book A History of Study Abroad: 1965 to Present and thought I would share this very short piece on the early stages in developing standards of good practice for U.S. study abroad programs:

In the immediate years after World War II, colleges and universities in the United States that previously halted their junior year abroad programs began to revive their programs and started to establish new junior year abroad program offerings. Under the leadership of the Institute of International Education, a joint institutional collaborative effort to revive junior year abroad programming was initiated in 1945 and the first meeting of the “General Junior Year Committee” met on October 10, 1945. (Hoffa, 2007, p. 159) The committee, renamed the “Council on the Junior Year Abroad”, then held annual meetings for several years to “review the various programs and establish policies on recognition, criteria and academic standards.” (Bowman, 1987, p. 15) During the early 1950’s the Social Science Research Council, funded by the U.S. Government, carried out the first series of studies in the field. These studies were primarily evaluative research studies and they intended to illustrate the best way to conduct exchange programs. (Bowman, 1968, p. 177)

Bowman, J.E. (1968). Research in Educational Exchange Problems-Step One: Defining Our Problem., CIEE Occasional Paper on International Educational Exchange No. 14, New York: Council on International Educational Exchange.

Bowman, J.E. (1987). Educating American Undergraduates Abroad: The Development of Study Abroad Programs by American Colleges and Universities. New York: Council on International Educational Exchange.

Hoffa, W.W. (2007). A History of US Study Abroad: Beginnings to 1965. A Special Publication of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad and The Forum on Education Abroad.

I find it fascinating that colleges and universities in the United States acted so quickly to reestablish and develop new junior year abroad programs so quickly after the end of World War II. I was equally impressed that the field of international education collaborated to establish the “General Junior Year Committee” and later the “Council on the Junior Year Abroad” that focused, in part, on standards of good practice.

If anyone knows where documents (reports, meeting minutes, photos, notes or other documents of interest) from these committees are housed I would love to hear from you!

Call for Pilot Participants: The Forum Education Abroad Incident Database

A new and interesting development in the area of health and safety in education abroad has been created by a Task Force the Forum on Education Abroad. The Forum’s Data Committee announced that Forum member institutions (and I’m guessing organizations as well) are encouraged to submit applications to participate in a project (Education Abroad Incident Database) that will pilot an education abroad database designed to track various types of incidents that happen on educational programs abroad. The results of the pilot project will be discussed at the Forum’s Standards of Good Practice Institute “Beyond the Basics of Health, Safety and Security” in conjunction with the next annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 24, 2010.

Special recognition should be given to the members of the Forum’s Education Abroad Incident Database Task Force:
Bill Frederick, School for Field Studies, Chair
Brian Brubaker, Dickinson College
Regine Lambrech, Columbia University
Natalie Mello, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Chris Powers, IIE
Gary Rhodes, SAFETI
Adam Rubin, CIEE
Arlene Snyder, Arcadia University
John Tansey, Dartmouth College

You can learn more Forum Education Abroad Incident Database pilot project here.

Call for Proposals for Forum on Education Abroad Standards of Good Practice Institute

The Forum on Education Abroad has announced on their website a call for session proposals for their inaugural Standards of Good Practice Institute, "Beyond the Basics of Health, Safety and Security," to be held March 24, 2010 in conjunction with their annual conference. The deadline for submitting proposals is July 31, 2009.

A detailed description from the Forum’s website follows:

The primary purpose of the Standards Institutes is to offer participants the opportunity to broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the Forum Standards of Good Practice and hone their skills in implementing them. The first Institute, Beyond the Basics of Health, Safety and Security, will be dedicated to the education abroad risk management issues with which organizations and institutions struggle. The practical, hands-on focus for this day will include multiple concurrent and plenary sessions that will assist participants to improve their institutional and organizational strategies for risk mitigation, incident prevention and response. The goals of the Institute are to:

- Deepen knowledge and understanding of Standard 7, Health, Safety and Security;
- Enhance the knowledge and skills necessary to meet this Standard by analyzing what the Standard requires and sharing examples of best practices;
- Discuss and make suggestions for improvement of the Health, Safety and Security Standard;

- Explore approaches to and implementation of risk management best practices for education abroad;
- Discuss the outcomes of and suggest improvements to the Forum’s incident reporting pilot database;
- Enhance the overall safety and security of participants’ education abroad programs for the benefit of the students who participate in them.

The Institute will be designed to address the needs of experienced practitioners in the area of risk management in education abroad. Institute participants will be expected to have more than a basic knowledge of the topics involved and therefore proposals should not be geared to entry-level concerns. While a number of sessions will be led by invited experts both from within and from outside the education abroad field, some sessions will be chosen through a competitive selection process. Questions of interest to the Institute include:

- What are the best practices in emergency planning, training, and the development and testing of crisis management plans?
- How do organizations establish and implement successful risk management communications protocols?
- What are the legal and liability concerns that are most serious for education abroad and how should they be understood?
- What is acceptable risk in an education abroad context?
- What critical incidents should the field be reporting and how should it best compile the information?
- How do organizations and institutions best prepare for and deal with the death of a student?
- What are the cross-cultural dimensions of health care that are essential to understand?
- What can education abroad learn from the experience and knowledge of travel medicine?
- What reasonable accommodations should programs make under the Americans with Disabilities Act?
- What factors need to be considered, and what decision-making processes need to be put in place, for deciding when to close (and re-open) a program due to safety concerns?
- How can organizations best assess and determine adequate insurance coverage for all areas of education abroad programming?
- What are strategies for providing access to effective medical care?
- How does the psychological development of late adolescents and their cognitive abilities impact students’ ability to understand risk?

Session Format and Proposals
The majority of sessions are expected to follow the Forum’s distinctive roundtable format; however, the Institute Planning Committee will consider session proposals that utilize other formats, including panel presentations. Successful proposals will describe in detail how the proposed session will broaden and deepen participants’ knowledge and understanding of the Forum Standard on "Health, Safety, and Security” and hone their skills in implementing it. Those submitting a successful proposal may be invited to submit a white paper for a post-Institute publication.

You can learn more about the Standards of Good Practice Institute and access the Standards Institute Proposal Form here.

The Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET)

In case IHEC Blog readers are not up on the numerous youth exchange activities in our field I thought I would briefly highlight the work of The Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET). I first became aware of the work of CSIET when I was contracted by the Forum on Education Abroad to create their Standards Toolbox (which is a companion to their Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad) as they have produced some great resources related to standards of good practice for the field. I find that CSIET produces excellent resources that can be very informative for colleagues working in higher education.

It’s been some time since I’ve been on the CSIET website and it now has a new and better look and feel. I found two new items on the CSIET website that I thought IHEC Blog readers might find of interest.

First, those of you who like data (and who doesn’t?) might find their Youth Exchange Statistics to be of interest. You can access the data here.

Second, CSIET has launched a joint public service campaign entitled "Host Exchange Students" with the United States Department of State. You can link to this new initiative here.

Educational travel for youth (pre-collegiate level) is becoming more of an interest for me as I was 16 and 18 when I was an exchange student in Rosenheim, Germany so I plan to post more in this area of the field. It was these experiences during my teenage years that lead me on my career path in international education.

NAFSA Task Force on Standards and Responsibilities (1980)

As I was searching my research notes I came across something that I thought IHEC Blog readers who enjoy a little history with their international education may find interesting. The following is a description of the NAFSA Task Force on Standards and Responsibilities from the early 1980’s:

“NAFSA convened the Task Force on Standards and Responsibilities in early 1980. This task force considered many alternatives. It acknowledged that self-regulation was more desirable than government regulation of standards of practice. It also considered and rejected a program of accreditation that would first formally endorse programs that met established standards and then police them through periodic evaluation and any necessary censure. What the task force finally chose was a complete program of self-regulation, which involved endorsement by the NAFSA board and support by other major educational associations and agencies. As part of the new program, NAFSA published “Principles for International Educational Exchange” in 1981 for endorsement by all NAFSA members. The Principles were also formally endorsed by the Commission on International Education of the American Council on Education, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and Land Grant Colleges. In 1983, NAFSA published the first edition of this self-study guide with dealt with the principles.”[1]


This is just one of the efforts in the field of study abroad to develop a set of standards of good practice. You can learn more about this in the chapter I'm writing with my colleague Martha Merritt on the assessment of and standards for study abroad in the forthcoming A History of US Study Abroad: 1965 to the Present edited by Stephen DePaul and William Hoffa which is scheduled for publication later this year.


You may also be interested in the History of Standards of Good Practice in Education Abroad Bibliography I compiled last year for the 3rd edition of the Forum on Education Abroad Standards of Good Practice in Education Abroad.

[1] Description obtained from NAFSA Self-Study Guide: The Assessment of Programs and Services for International Educational Exchange at Postsecondary Institutions (1994) written by Harriet L. Marsh.

Grade Translation in Education Abroad Standards Project

During the Standards Committee meeting at the Forum on Education Abroad conference in Portland last week I accepted the task to coordinate the development of standards of good practice in grade translation/conversion in order to avoid discrepancies among different groups reporting grades.

I'm seeking volunteers to help with this project in support of the greater standards of good practice in education abroad. Volunteers are preferred from the Mid-Career group in the field. If you are interested in contributing to this project please let me know as soon as possible. I would like to move forward in the near future with the goal so that I can submit a completed project to the Standards Committee several weeks before the NAFSA conference which is when/where the next committee meeting will likely be held. I can be reached at: international.ed.consulting@gmail.com or dcomp@uchicago.edu.

Standards for Environmentally and Socially Responsible Education Abroad Programs

The Forum on Education Abroad has made a draft of their Standards for Environmentally and Socially Responsible Education Abroad Programs available on their website for member comment. I encourage all Forum members to find time in their schedules to review and comment on these new and important for the field.

Standards of Good Practice For Short-Term Education Abroad Programs

Today, The Forum on Education Abroad released their Standards of Good Practice for Short-Term Education Abroad Programs and made them available on their website. The Forum Standards Committee states in the introduction that “the intent of the Standards for Short-Term Programs are not a substitute for the more general standards” and that they “are intended to be utilized together as companions to provide the most comprehensive guidance for short-term program management.” The Forum Standards Committee notes that they chose not to deliver the Standards for Short-Term Programs in the query-based format which is found in the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad and instead chose to write these standards in a direct way. Thanks should be given to the Forum Standards Committee and the staff at The Forum on Education Abroad for bringing this important publication to market.

More Standards for International Education

The American International Recruitment Council (AIRC) is a new organization working towards the development of standards of good practice in the recruitment of international students to study in the United States. Today’s issue of insidehighered.com has an interesting article on AIRC which you can read here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/06/recruiting

You can read my previous post on AIRC here.

Need for Standards for International Education

During my recent research efforts I came across the following statement on the need for standards for international education from 1992 that I thought I'd share with readers:

“Sojourn difficulties are an occupational reality at all levels of exchange. They are exacerbated, however, when organizations responsible for facilitating exchange programs fail to do so at adequate levels of quality and ethicality. In such instances, increases in volume of exchange present a liability rather than an opportunity, and the potential for good effects becomes eroded by the incidence of failure in and dissatisfaction with the exchange experience. To the extent that individual participants suffer psychologically, emotionally, or physically, the field as a whole suffers damaged visibility and reputation. When administering organizations fail to respond professionally and competently to the inevitable difficulties that arise in teenage exchanges, the field risks increased liability as well.” (p. 1)

Bachner, D.J. (1992). Developing Program Standards for International Educational
Exchange, NAFSA Working Paper #25. Evans City, PA: NAFSA Publications.

American International Recruitment Council (AIRC)

An interesting new organization has been formed recently to focus on international recruitment efforts of U.S. higher education institutions. The American International Recruitment Council (AIRC) is a non-profit organization made up of educational institutions in the United States. The AIRC website indicates the organization’s purpose as follows:

“The purpose of the organization is to i) develop standards of ethical practice pertaining to recruitment of international students to American educational institutions, such standards to address two constituencies: Educational Institutions and Student Recruitment Agents; ii) develop best practices and training to assist overseas student recruitment agents and institutions themselves to better serve both students seeking admission to American educational institutions, and iii) establish a framework through which participating agents can have their practices certified. In addition, the organization may undertake other activities as are necessary to accomplish its goals.”

You can access the AIRC website here: http://www.airc-education.org/

Forum on Education Abroad Annual Conference

A little over two weeks ago, the Forum on Education Abroad held its 4th annual conference in Boston on April 2-4, 2008. My understanding is that there were over 700 registered participants which exceeded expectations. I think that the Forum’s leadership and development of a Code of Ethics since the New York and Connecticut Attorney Generals began their investigations into study abroad early last autumn was a leading factor in the overwhelming attendance. All the staff of the Forum on Education Abroad and all of the colleagues who volunteered their time in planning and working the conference deserve a big round of applause.

Conference sessions on standards of good practice and the code of ethics were prevalent throughout the conference. All conference attendees also received hard copies of the Code of Ethics for Education Abroad (2008) and the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad, 3rd Edition (2008).

Standards of Good Practice in the Field of Education Abroad

Recently during my research, I came across an historical article (1967) that was one of the first to address the development of standards in the field of study abroad. The citation is as follows:

Durnall, Edward J. (1967, November). Study-Abroad Programs: A Critical Survey. The Journal of Higher Education, 38 (8), 450-453.

In this brief four page article, Durnall discusses his survey of undergraduate programs in Europe conducted by U.S. institutions and mentions the methods used during his program evaluation as he utilized six of fifteen principles developed at a conference on study abroad held at Mount Holyoke College in 1960.

I just returned from the 3rd annual Forum on Education Abroad conference in Austin, Texas, with the theme of Standards in a Diverse World: The Future of Education Abroad, where the Mount Holyoke conference was mentioned and discussed by colleagues such as Bill Hoffa whose History of Study Abroad, Volume I: Beginnings to 1965 was distributed to all conference attendees.

While some of the material in Durnall’s article is dated I find the following comment by Durnall to remain valid today, “while it would be hoped that all institutions with study-abroad programs would voluntarily examine their programs in the light of commonly accepted standards and either make the necessary improvements to meet these standards or discontinue the programs, the realities of higher education in the United States today make this an unlikely event.”