Saturday, January 29, 7:30-9:00 a.m.
AAC&U Annual Meeting
Breakfast Roundtable Discussion
In recent years, institutions of all sorts have initiated a plethora of off-campus and international study-abroad programs in an attempt to expose their students to the changing social and economic world order. Many institutions offer such programs as a means of keeping up with student demand for such opportunities, however the "academy in transition" needs to move beyond simple supply-side thinking and develop stronger connections between immersion learning experiences and the liberal arts education we value so passionately.
What is meant by immersion learning? We define immersion learning as an intentional, unique academic experience specifically constructed for students to quickly and efficiently immerse themselves in the subject being studied. These experiences provide the benefit of experiencing different locales and cultures while simultaneously maintaining the community feeling of the on-campus experience.
While off-campus and study-abroad opportunities offer students a unique academic experience, the cost of funding a large number of students for such travel and the potential disruption this creates at the home campus makes such programs unfeasible at many institutions. Immersion learning experiences model effective academic practices: experiences founded in good teaching, experiences that create high levels of student interaction with faculty and peers in both non-classroom and classroom settings, and experiences that focus on the integration of ideas and concepts. The continuing challenge is to create immersion experiences that do not detract from the intellectual engagement of the on-campus community by pulling out large numbers of students for prolonged periods of time. If we are to promote integrative and culminating learning, we must create academic opportunities that provide diverse learning experiences while maintaining an engaged campus community that can grow and develop through the intellectual sharing of such experiences. Immersion learning programs provide the mechanism for providing such opportunities to the greatest number of students in the most cost-efficient manner.
In an effort to generate discussion and dialogue concerning this topic, our panel will present and discuss several different short-term immersion learning programs that provide unique academic opportunities for students while supporting and enhancing the liberal arts education offered by the presenting institutions. These programs take a variety of forms and include the Ecuador summer study program at Wabash College, the Kalamazoo College Discovery Externship program, as well as several other short-term immersion programs that range in duration from one week to one month. While ultimately meeting the unique needs of each campus, these programs collectively demonstrate what we can accomplish when we purposefully focus on modeling the full-time intellectual engagement that is the hallmark of a liberal arts education. Such programs, when constructed properly, provide a valuable alternative to traditional off-campus and study-abroad programs and enhance the quality of student-teacher and student-student interaction in ways that can not be duplicated on-campus. Through our panel presentation and discussion we will demonstrate that well-crafted, short-term immersion programs provide an excellent example of institutions "living their mission."