Tuesday, February 24, 2009

It's the travel, not the time?

From Chronicle of Higher Education. I find this particularly interesting as Puget Sound is looking at ways to develop short travel programs:

The length of time students study overseas has no significant impact on whether they become globally engaged later in life, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a conclusion that is sure to add fuel to the already fiery debate over the efficacy of increasingly popular short-term study-abroad programs.

The findings of the Study Abroad for Global Engagement project, presented here on Thursday at the annual conference of the Forum on Education Abroad, suggest that students who go overseas for a short period of time, four weeks or less, are just as likely as those who study abroad for several months or even a year to be globally engaged.

Read the whole thing here.