Study Abroad Survey Results

CMC recently received results from a Student Study Abroad Survey conducted by Interact Communications. Here is what our Study Abroad students from the last few years had to say. We are considering the results as we plan our programs for the coming year.

Here is what we learned:

- While students felt that self-discipline was needed to do well in abroad programs, they also agreed that they had consistent support from faculty to help them
- 87% of students said they were intellectually challenged
- The majority of our students study abroad to learn a language and they expect to have fun doing it!
- Community participants can learn and participate without taking class for credit toward a program
- 97.4 % of our study abroad students recommend us to other students
- 59% of our students said it was relatively easy to take a semester program and a similar number said they would like to participate in a semester program
- 94% of our students said that our semester program was good to very good
- 89% said that a four week program would be easy to do and 85% said that a two week program would be easy to do
- 72% of students said that their study abroad experience did not extend the time it took to get their degrees

Here is what we do well:

- Provide academically challenging programs
- Students meet and interact with people from the host country and other international students
- Students can take courses that can count toward their degree programs
- Most students felt that the study load was about right --neither too light nor too heavy
- The great majority of students felt that their course abroad was “better” (learned more) than their campus courses
- Our community and campus students agreed that travel was a big motivator for them
- They found the unique content they were looking for in their programs abroad and that CMC faculty positively impacted the learning experience

What we should do more of:

- We want to develop more internship opportunities for students
- We would like to offer a larger variety of language and other discipline programs
- We should establish new student and faculty exchange opportunities
- We need more scholarship opportunities to improve student access
- We want to do more marketing to get the word out about our programs

• Programs in the Planning for 2010:
  
  2 Spanish Immersion programs
  1 Social Science program w/ another discipline
  1 Humanities/Literature
  1 Physical Science program

Thank you to all the students who replied to the survey!

Updates for Study Abroad on the CMC web-site are coming soon!