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Evaluating
Study Abroad Programs for Health and Safety Good Practices According to NAFSA’s
Guide to Education Abroad for Advisers and Administrators,
evaluation of education abroad programs and the assessment
of activities and student learning are vital, ongoing
tasks for every program sponsor and for every sending
institution. Evaluations from faculty, staff, and
students should include the following: ·
On-site
orientation programs (arrival and pre-departure) ·
Field
trips and excursions ·
Extracurricular
activities ·
Academic
program, internships, grading practices/standards, credit
transfer, effectiveness of instruction ·
Academic
resources, facilities, library resources ·
Home
stays ·
Health
and safety issues ·
On-site
student program evaluations This information from
NAFSA is viewable on The SAFETI
(Safety Abroad First - Educational Travel Information)
Clearinghouse, initiated in 1998 to create and disseminate
resources to support study abroad program development and
implementation, emphasizing health and safety issues and
resources for U.S. colleges and universities supporting
study abroad. NAFSA’s
Interassociational Advisory Committee on Safety and
Responsibility in Study Abroad created the guidelines
"Responsible Study Abroad: Good Practices for Health
and Safety, as “a set of good practices so that
practitioners, educational administrators, students, and
parents have a
common set of expectations about what is involved with
study abroad, and what preparation is necessary to
minimize risk. This purpose of developing
these guidelines is “Because the health and safety of
study abroad participants are primary concerns, these
statements of good practice have been developed to provide
guidance to institutions, participants (including faculty
and staff), and parents/guardians/families. These
statements are intended to be aspirational in nature. They
address issues that merit attention and thoughtful
consideration by everyone involved with study abroad. They
are intentionally general; they are not intended to
account for all the many variations in study abroad
programs and actual health, safety, and security cases
that will inevitably occur. In dealing with any specific
situation, those responsible must also rely upon their
collective experience and judgment while considering their
specific circumstances.” To learn about the
responsibilities of Program Sponsors, participants, and
recommendations to parents/guardians/families, go to NAFSA’s
"Responsible Study Abroad: Good Practices for Health
and Safety. The
Forum on Education Abroad provides support for the
study abroad field to evaluate their programs. The
Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad involves
queries which “provide the basis for self-evaluation by
individual professionals, their programs and their
institutions, for internal or external review. The query
basis allows programs to be evaluated by their adherence
to the Standards, and most significantly, in relation to
institutional missions.” The Standards for
Short-Term Education Abroad Programs complement this by
additional Standards more relevant to short-term programs
to provide specific guidelines for short-term education
abroad programming, particularly programs that are
organized and/or led by home campus faculty. The Code of
Ethics for Education Abroad “provides a guide for making
ethical decisions to ensure that those in the education
abroad field provide services in accord with the highest
ethical standards, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that
students’ international educational experiences are as
rich and meaningful as possible. These three documents can
be viewed on the Forum’s
website.
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