ABSTRACT

Although common barriers to studying abroad are well documented, this paper proposes a more-overarching barrier is that prevalent evaluation strategies provide little evidence of how study abroad contributes to discipline-specific learning outcomes. Such direct evidence is likely to encourage more employers to view studying abroad as adding value to a graduate resume and hence motivate more students to participate. Studying abroad is often represented in the literature as delivering a transformative impact for all students, regardless of their specific academic programme. While this may be true, it frames the benefits of studying abroad as being generic and supplementary to any discipline-specific curriculum. This paper provides a specific example derived from an Australian national data set and reviews other methodologies that can deliver outcomes data for specific disciplines and for different study programmes, enabling more effective programme evaluation and more effective promotion of the benefits of studying abroad for different students.

摘要

尽管有很多文献记载了出国留学的常见障碍，但本文提出了一个更为全面的障碍，即普遍的评估策略几乎没有证据表明出国留学如何对特定学科的学习成果做出贡献。这些直接证据可能会鼓励更多的雇主将出国留学视为增加毕业生履历的附加值，从而激励更多的学生参与。在国外文学中，出国留学通常代表着对所有学生都具有变革性影响，无论他们的具体学术课程是什么。尽管这可能是正确的，但它使出国留学的好处体现为对任何特定学科课程的通用和补充。