In Episode 40, “globetrotters.edu,” Sandy Strick and Karen Edwards at the University of South Carolina, described how they created virtual study abroad trips for their Hospitality and Marketing students.   Initially, they needed an alternative when the pandemic stopped international travel, but they discovered they had created a valuable format to use for learners who couldn’t travel for myriad reasons.

They got Dan thinking about his own work in global education,  so he challenged himself to rethink his approach and to design a virtual trip as an integral component of the complete global experience. 

At the end of Episode 40, Dan offered to report on the results, and now this episode is his chance to make good on that promise and tell us what he learned this summer.

By now, practically everyone who has a connection to academia has heard that the traditional audience for higher education is headed for a demographic cliff. In response, colleges and universities are exploring ways to attract an older audience of degree completers and life-long learners to bridge the gap. But who counts as an adult learner, and how do we retain them once we have their attention?

School isn’t the central hub of a non-traditional student’s life; rather, school is one of many spokes on a very full wheel.  To attract and retain this audience of students requires a willingness to stop expecting that, once admitted and formally welcomed, they will adjust to meet the campus status quo.  True inclusiveness means designing and delivering courses, programs, and services that fit into their lives, instead of expecting them to rearrange their lives and schedules to fit the rhythms of a campus they may never visit.

But how do we tailor educational offerings so they are not one-size-fits-all?

It’s especially appropriate that we’re taking a deeper dive into the topic of virtual field experiences on this Wired Ivy Footnotes episode because as I’m speaking, early in May 2022, Dan is in Europe having just completed a study abroad experience with a group of our students in Finland and Estonia, and he’s just started to working with a second group of students in Switzerland and Italy.  

As he mentioned in the previous episode, which featured his interview with Karen Edwards and Sandy Strick of University of South Carolina, and Tori Ellenberger of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, Dan was so anxious to use some of their ideas for virtual study abroad content that he re-wrote his pre-departure lessons immediately following that conversation. 

He’ll report on how that new approach landed with students, and whether he was able to observe any immediate benefits compared to previous trips he’s lead, in an upcoming Summer Shorts episode. But before Dan left, he and I made some time to discuss what we see as a few potential long-term opportunities and benefits that could result from continuing to blur the line between in-person and virtual experiential learning.