Outcomes Assessment
Historically, the field of education abroad has lacked extensive data demonstrating its outcomes – educational, professional, and personal. The Forum's Outcomes Assessment Committee addresses this need by encouraging and supporting research on and providing resources about the assessment of outcomes in education abroad.
New Resource!
Bibliography of Outcomes Assessment in Education Abroad
The Forum's Outcomes Committee is pleased to make available a new resource building on an earlier chart of studies assessing student learning abroad. The new resource, an annotated bibliography of publications on education abroad outcomes, is available here: Bibliography of Outcomes Assessment in Education Abroad.
The Bibliography is not intended to replace other databases featuring research in the field of international education. Instead, it focuses on studies assessing education abroad outcomes, with the aims of disseminating information about education abroad outcomes assessment to the Forum membership, and encouraging new research and practice. The bibliography is an on-going project will be updated quarterly by members of the Outcomes Committee. In the future, the committee hopes to make the bibliography searchable by adding keywords. Feedback and suggestions for the bibliography are welcome and can be sent to the Outcomes Committee by emailing info@forumea.org
The Forum sincerely thanks Betsy Brewer, Dennis Doyle and Nick Gozik for their contributions to this project, as well as the other members of the Outcomes Committee.
The committee had earlier compiled a chart of research studies on student learning abroad by members. The READ database provides more extensive listings.
The Guide to Outcomes Assessment in Education Abroad, provides tools for implementing outcomes assessment at your institution, is now available for purchase.
In addition, the Forum sponsors research studies for its members. For example, underway since 2007, the Forum BEVI Project, is a special collaboration with the International Beliefs and Values Institute (IBAVI). This project offers Forum member institutions the state-of-the-art opportunity to work with the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI), an innovative assessment measure that examines the processes and outcomes of international, multicultural, and transformative learning, broadly defined. In 2010, the Forum-IBAVI Working Group on BEVI Implementation was established in order to further this project and pursue a range of assessment, research, and applied issues.
In another research opportunity for members, the Forum-SAGE Partnership, the Forum collaborated with a research team at the University of Minnesota to offer members the opportunity to participate in Beyond Immediate Impact: Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE), a research project that documented the long-term impact of the education abroad experience by surveying and interviewing education abroad alumni.
The committee has developed four Position Papers discussing major issues and trends in assessment research.
The Forum's commitment to education outcomes of abroad experiences includes sponsorship of the Undergraduate Research Awards, and the recently announced Forum on Education Abroad Award for Excellence in Research.
