Guest Editor’s Note

This special issue of jge: The Journal of General Education focuses on international learning outcomes assessment. Why an issue on assessing international learning at this crossroads? How is such an issue relevant for those readers who are focused on general education?

Assessment and accountability are two of the most prominent higher education issues of our times. In the wake of government and business calls for additional transparency and accountability, recent higher education associations have featured these issues during recent conventions (the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges summer meeting, 2008; the Association of American Colleges and Universities annual meeting, January 2009; the American Council on Education (ace ) annual meeting, February 2009). In just the past few months, U.S. higher education media—notably, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed —have reported on prominent initiatives and new entities such as the Voluntary System of Accountability, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, and the Alliance for New Leadership for Student Learning and Accountability. Our higher education counterparts overseas, most notably those involved in the European Bologna process, are ratcheting up their own conversations about quality assurance— the European variation on the assessment and accountability movement rapidly gaining standing around the world.

These cries for accountability—nationally and internationally—are the backdrop for any discussion about learning outcomes and assessment and perhaps in themselves serve as a sufficient rationale for an issue focused on the assessment of international learning. However, related (and arguably deeper and more powerful) justifications for engaging in the assessment of international learning exist. These rationales reflect the shift away from a teaching-centered paradigm and toward the learning-centered model that is under way both in the United States and elsewhere. The purpose for assessment within such a frame of reference becomes first and foremost about how the process of assessment can promote enhanced student reflection about his or her learning. Asking students to take a second intentional look at their work and providing evidence of specific learning can further enhance their growth and development as reflective learners. To engage in such a practice of assessment, for such a purpose, is to engage in meaningful assessment.

Those involved in providing international learning opportunities to students, faculty, and staff have long been struggling with the challenge of capturing the elusive, complex, and developmental nature of international learning. This challenge approximates closely the challenge of those involved in capturing the complex developmental nature of the general liberal arts education. Many higher educators have gone so far as to say that a quality general liberal arts education necessarily includes global learning. Yet defining what “it” is has been an enigma, in part, because the world is not static; consequently, the requisite learning is necessarily evolving in nature. What may be an unknown language or area of the world to virtually all of U.S. higher education today may become a critical language or area of the world tomorrow, for example. Many a practitioner will bemoan the fact that several of the highly needed attitudes and skills required for effective interaction with others are not easily put into concrete language. Yet it is widely understood by those working in the field that these intangible qualities are often the defining factor between a successful or failed communication, negotiation, or nation-state relationship. And such qualities are not easily acquired through any one international learning opportunity—too often the default on many U.S. campuses. A one- or two-semester language requirement rarely results in producing a proficient second-language speaker. And a one-semester study-abroad experience rarely produces sophisticated intercultural negotiators. Rather, the high-level achievement of international learning— however elusive it may be to define—requires a combination of multiple learning opportunities offered throughout a student’s academic experience.

This is one of the principles that the ace /Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (fipse ) Lessons Learned in Assessing International Learning project documented in this issue was striving to address. From this principle springs a driving question. How can higher education institutions most effectively provide an appropriate combination of international learning experiences to ensure...