Academic Course

Every faculty-led program combines two essential parts: an academic course and a short-term study tour abroad. This distinction is important for a variety of reasons. Each part is built separately, for example, and has different application and enrollment procedures, financial policies, challenges, and opportunities.

The academic course for a faculty-led program is the basis for a program’s educational merit. The faculty leader, with the consultation of his or her academic department and college dean, may choose whichever form of a course he or she sees fit. Courses:

  • May use any course number in the course catalog, given department and college approval;
  • Must be credit-bearing;
  • May offer the amount of credit units listed in the course catalog;
  • Fall into one of three terms in which credit is awarded: Fall Semester, Spring Semester, or Summer Term. (Intersession courses fall under one of these three options.)

All students taking the course for credit pay the appropriate tuition rate plus a Study Abroad Student Fee. Fall or Spring Semester course tuition is included in the semester student account, whereas Summer Term course tuition is assessed at the standard Summer tuition rate, indexed to the course's credit amount.

Course Syllabus

As part of your program proposal, you must submit a complete course syllabus that contains the standard information found in any on-campus course. These details include, but are not limited to, your Student Learning Outcomes, a course description, credit and Carnegie hour calculations, all assignments, any required textbooks or materials, a grading scheme, and course start and end dates. The syllabus should articulate clearly the roles of all faculty leaders, as these individuals must facilitate academic instruction or logistical support in some essential capacity.

Student Learning Outcomes

Like any other course, a successful faculty-led program course is founded foremost upon sound Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). All faculty-led programs should start with a clear articulation of SLOs. Failure to consider the essential role of SLOs may lead to poor program design, confusion of target audiences, improper marketing, unclear evaluations, and lack of sufficient student interest.

Given the diversity of possible topics for faculty-led programs, all courses will and should have SLOs that reflect their academic content and study tour locations. That said, the Office of Education Abroad recommends inclusion or adaptation of intercultural SLOs, such as the following examples:

  1. Evolving knowledge of self, others, and the world
  2. Critical thinking and communication skills
  3. Inclusive attitudes and values

Course Dates

As non-traditional courses, faculty-led courses do not have to align strictly to the start and end of an academic term. With some degree of flexibility, you are free to choose the course's official start and end dates. 

The Registrar restricts course dates to the following parameters:

  • A course start date may not fall earlier than the start of the enrollment period for that course's term.
    • For example, summer courses may not start prior to the opening of summer term enrollment, which typically falls in March or April. The same process goes for fall and spring courses.
    • To view the dates of a term's enrollment period, consult the university's Academic Calendar.
    • If faculty wish to meet with students prior to the enrollment period, they may do so, but these meetings must be non-mandatory sessions for course completion, not official course meetings. They must inform students of these meetings well in advance, as they will not appear on their official schedules.
  • Course dates must be inclusive of the entirety of a study tour; a tour cannot begin prior to its course's official start date or terminate after a course's official end date.
  • The Registrar requires submission of final grades no later than the course withdrawal or add/drop date of the subsequent academic term.

For a start date, select the day when you expect to have the first mandatory course meeting, whether it be in-person, online, or off-campus. For an end date, select the day when you hold the final mandatory course meeting or expect students to submit final projects, whether it be in-person, online, or off-campus. Consider extending the official end date of the course after the termination of the study tour to grant your students time to complete final projects and yourself time to grade.

Contact Hours

Cal Lutheran determines that one Carnegie hour equals fourteen contact hours. As a result, a four-credit faculty-led program course would equal about fifty-six contact hours. Education Abroad considers contact hours to include any and all pre-tour course meetings, official (not free) time during the study tour, and post-tour course meetings.

Prerequisites

Your faculty-led program course may have one or more prerequisites as determined by you, your department, and your college dean. Prerequisites can be the same as listed in the course catalog for the course number you choose; and may or may not include a minimum GPA requirement of 3.00, which is the standard minimum GPA that the Office of Education Abroad recommends. Note that too many prerequisites may affect negatively your ability to market the program to a wider audience of students.

Designing a Marketable Course

We encourage faculty to select and design courses with attention to several different factors. To maximize your pool of potential applicants, you should consider some push factors that tend to deter students: 

  • too many credits result in high tuition rates, as the course may push students over the tuition maximum for a semester and is billed by credit for summer courses;
  • a program that duplicates a similar on-campus course or program abroad may not attract enough students;
  • similarly, a program too specific in content may not interest enough applicants.

Also consider other pull factors that may attract students, such as

  • Core 21 indicators,
  • professional electives for a major or minor, or
  • interdisciplinary topics that pull in students from more than one college or department.
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