Students taking-study abroad trips is generally assumed to be a generic good-thing, but surely experience and outcomes differ by country and culture

Ly Thi Tran (Deakin U) and colleagues decided to find out what works for New Colombo Plan participants. Via surveys, interviews and fieldwork they explored Australian students’ learning and engagement from the plan to discover they not only were exposed to cultures new to them but developed ambitions and understanding of what they could do with their lives.

“Learning abroad should be designed and delivered with the focus not only on honing students’ development of technical knowledge and skills but also on strategically nurturing their professional and intercultural connections with the region and their understandings about the region,” they write, in the Higher Education Quarterly.

The paper extends Professor Tran’s research on host nations response to the NCP (CMM January 27)