Re-entry is the elephant in the room for international educators. We know, from Student Learning Abroad, that systematic reflective activity after abroad experiences significantly improves students’ intercultural communication skills, cultural understanding, and self-awareness. As I have shared elsewhere, Richard Kiely’s chameleon complex also documents the extent to which participants returning from global service-learning experiences typically struggle to reconnect with friends and family. Yet courses after abroad experiences are rarely offered, perhaps due to intense focus on increasing the number of students studying abroad, combined with students’ sense of career and academic constraints as well as institutional limitations in a time of tight budgets. We know it’s a best practice, yet it happens too rarely.

I have been extremely fortunate to be able to offer a three-credit re-entry course, Global Studies 370: Crossing Borders, for the past two fall semesters at Providence College. In this post I’m going to share a few lessons learned, a cool new platform for sharing stories, and a couple of my current questions.

Getting Beyond, “How as your trip?” –> “Awesome.” 

Reflecting and sharing were principle organizing actions for a major part of the course. Students were challenged to improve their concise communication skills by practicing elevator speech responses to “How was your trip?” or honing answers for hypothetical interview questions such as, “Tell us about a time you demonstrated your intercultural communication skills.” All along, I placed emphasis on the importance of developing multiple strategies to communicate about one’s own change and perspective shifts with friends and family members. Additionally, the course included requirements to make concise public presentations (only five minutes per student) on the same day as our institution’s study abroad fair.

During the first offering of the course, each student in the class also made a major (45 minute) presentation on his or her own study abroad experience. This afforded a lot of space for learning about Providence College’s various abroad offerings, but it cut the dialogue and limited the amount of exchange possible each week. This year, I was fortunate to come across the story-sharing platform called Cowbird. Using this simple formula of one photo, one story, one voice, students shared their reflections in a manner that was accessible for class and also applicable for their various social networks. You can see part of the collection below, or click on the photos to see more.

Micro-Reflecting with Cowbirds

And actually, it is possible to do multi-photo, multi-page stories. I developed prompts and time limitations for several Cowbird reflections during the course of the semester. Here’s the list:

• How was your trip? 60 – 90 sec
• The driving question is… 60 – 90 sec
• Critical Incident… 90 – 240 sec (multi-page)
• About culture, I learned … 60 – 90 sec
• What I brought home… 60 – 90 sec
• The point is … 120 – 300 sec (multi-page)

The students and I were happy with the Cowbirds. Early on I was regularly insistent about ensuring students “show” rather than “tell” and during the course of the semester students’ reflections moved more deeply into demonstrations rather than simple declarations. The students reported enjoying the challenge of the Cowbirds, and also the way in which they could post their finished products to Facebook, Twitter, etc., or email them to their parents or friends. I’m going to close with a few of the students’ favorites at the end of this post. Actually, they’re student favorites and Cowbird community favorites. One of the unique features of using this platform is that anyone online might see, hear, and choose to “love” one of the student reflections. (On Cowbird, loving is clicking on the heart button). Before sharing the favorites, however, I’d like to reflect on remaining challenges.

What Theme: Reflection, Communication, Careers, & Global Development? 

We had two core themes in the course: (1) reflecting, understanding, and developing the skills and opportunities to communicate about that reflection and understanding, and (2) considering and preparing for global career opportunities. An anthropologist friend astutely observed that the course offers a clear opportunity for comparative analysis across global systems. This potential certainly exists, but there has always been a rift built in to the class.

Last fall and this past fall, there were several students who completed abroad experiences in the Global South. In 2012, those students demonstrated interest in meeting outside of class for separate discussions on development issues. This past term I regularly offered opportunities for discussing development outside of class, but – due to student personalities or different numbers of interested students – the development cohort did not emerge as it did the previous year.

My sense is that the course needs one more gathering theme, beyond the two mentioned above (reflection / communication and careers). It could easily be global development issues, but the students who studied theology in Rome or marketing in London aren’t prepared for that conversation in the same way that students who studied human rights in Argentina or Reconciliation in Rwanda are. Providence College is considering breaking the course into two sections, one for students who completed programs in the Global South and one for those who were in the North. Yet even that split is imperfect, as students who completed programs focusing on Indigenous Issues in New Zealand or reconciliation in Northern Ireland often bring similar kinds of preparation and reflection as those students mentioned above who studied in Argentina and Rwanda.

If anyone has suggestions for organizing around such themes, I’m all ears. Below are a few favorite reflections.

Student Voices:

And finally, I’m working on developing a Building a Better World Story Sharing Community. Cowbird is free in its simplest form, with no audio and only single-page stories. It costs $5 a month with a year-long commitment to get “citizen” status, so it’s $60 per individual to really get the most out of it (the stories do stay up after that year, even if the subscription is canceled). I’ve been negotiating with Cowbird about bulk subscriptions and have an opportunity for much lower rates. If your institution is interested in being part of the community of reflections that will be gathered here – representing both student and community voices – please send me an email at buildingbetterworld(at)gmail(dot)com.

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Eric Hartman is Co-founder and Editor of criticalservicelearning.org. He received the 2013 Early Career Research Award from the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. He was also awarded the 4 under 40 Impact Prize from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, recognizing his work developing evidence-based curricula to advance global citizenship and for his leadership as Executive Director of Amizade Global Service-Learning from 2007-10. Through Amizade, where he currently serves on the Board of Directors, he has been fortunate to support community-driven development in Bolivia, Jamaica, the Navajo Nation, Tanzania, and several other locations around the world. This work has led his research to focus on Fair Trade Learning, a conceptualization of educational exchange that prioritizes partnership, reciprocity, and transparency. He is a Visiting Professor of Global Studies at Providence College.