Design

What if study abroad isn’t the right choice for you?

What colleagues, administrators, and other institutional stakeholders may fail to consider is the tremendous personal cost of planning and leading study abroad, which could present an unsurmountable gravity problem for novice facilitators. If you have taken the cognitive load quiz [Word, 75k] and have found that it’s too high, now may not be the time for you to start planning a study abroad program.

In addition, there are numerous alternatives to study abroad that may be less time-consuming to plan and incorporate into your classes. For example, some teachers choose projects that require students to interact with highly competent speakers, such as by interviewing experts in their field of study (Fischer et al., 2021). Some teachers develop online partnerships with other language classes to engage students in authentic speaking activities, such as through Worldchat.live, a pedagogical tool to support authentic conversation between students around the world.