Point:Counterpoint

E-Mail and Study Abroad

The Pros and Cons of Travel and Learning in Cyberspace

Until recently, a transition abroad meant quite literally travel to a place not ones own. When you arrived you knew that home was far away and communications with it were likely to be difficult if not impossible.

"Accidental tourists" faced this isolation by developing survival skills and living within the portable cocoon of their own culture. True travelers, on the other hand, eagerly grasped the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new culture precisely because it was not their own. The familiar securities were happily suspended in order to learn how life is lived by those who really were at home in this foreign place. Becoming oneself again in a new environment was the ultimate challenge.

Such notions of travel are now challenged by the shrinking of earthly distance and cultural diversity resulting from the new communications technologies. The emerging global culture seems to contend with all indigenous cultures. Some observers see at hand the end of the very cultural diversity which has hitherto made us want to travel--to see and hear and learn first hand about a "there" so different from "here."

"See the world while it lasts," writes the editor in the June 1995 issue of Colors . "Technology is infectious. Every time an antenna is raised in a remote village, another local culture becomes extinct. No society is equipped to withstand the onslaught. Every satellite launched, every cable laid, the death of every elder, hastens the end of cultural diversity. If you are 25, it will disappear during your lifetime. Forget about stopping it; you can't. Instead savor every chance you get to absorb a passing world, to experience as much as you can before it fades into a big version of anyplace."

The telecommunications revolution thus represents a challenge not only to the traditional means but also to the very meaning and supposed value of travel. Apart from the pace at which other places become just like "home"--thereness merging into hereness--there is also the question of what it means to live in virtual, as opposed to geographical and historical, reality.

In short, it is now possible to move through physical space but still not leave home. Is this really travel or is one only "in-a-sense abroad"--to recall Mark Twain's pun in the title of his 1869 satirical novel on Americans who took so much cultural baggage abroad with them that they never really left home?

In an attempt to gauge the current impact of the technologies on the experiences of U.S. students enrolled in education abroad programs, I recently conducted a survey over SECUSS-L. Respondents were asked to discuss how e-mail and Internet access affected the experiences of their students before, during, and after their time away. Responses came from 40 schools across the U.S.--large and small, private and public, urban and rural--and from several institutions overseas. More than anything else, the survey showed that the use of the new communications technology is growing dramatically wherever students have access to it and encouragement to use it.

Predeparture

About 45 percent of the responding campuses said, yes, prior to departure their students were using the Internet to make contact with resources in the countries to which they were heading; 25 percent said no, they were not. The remaining 30 percent said they could not tell one way or the other. Those whose students are active predeparture users of e-mail indicated that they use it primarily to gain accurate and timely information about the curriculum and social activities of their future host institution.

It is becoming standard practice at many colleges and universities to encourage students to use the World Wide Web to find out more about programs. Once they are accepted into a program, students use the Web to ask the detailed questions that come up as they plan for their time abroad.

Students now routinely log into Lonely Planet guides, State Department Advisories, and other information sources. They also communicate with those students from their own institution who are currently on programs, discuss housing with housing offices, etc. John Pearson of Stanford University points out that student access to overseas host institution information, such as university catalogs and course offerings, puts them "ahead of their advisers (me!!!) in figuring all this out. . . . Advisers used to have all the available information. But now that students can access it just as easily, or more easily than advisers, it changes how we advise. We don't control the information anymore. I think this is good; the advising time then can be more productive."

Overseas advisers, such as Diana Kealey of Manchester University in the U.K., also welcome this predeparture contact: "About a third of our incoming students are asking a range of questions prior to departure via email. As you can imagine, it increases our workload quite considerably, but it is also an excellent way to create good relationships."

Web access to useful information is not uniformly available for all countries and programs. Not surprisingly, the countries of Western Europe are more likely to have good on-line information than more exotic locations. Stepahnie Morimura of CIEE/Tokyo reports that many of her students say they tried to get information on Japan before departure via Gopher, but were largely unsuccessful. The same seems true for students heading for most nontraditional destinations in Africa and Asia and parts of Latin America, though some programs or universities make e-mail available.

On-Site

All survey respondents indicated that their students were using electronic communications in at least some overseas sites. About a third said that they themselves arranged these communications links for their own students and programs. Two-thirds indicated that what was available depended entirely on facilities in the host institution or country.

Countries mentioned most often as being especially geared up to furnish access were England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Staying in Touch

Correspondence with friends and parents is currently the primary overseas use of e-mail. Almost all advisers said e-mail is used to contact the home campus study abroad offices to deal with a) on-site academic and adjustment problems, and b) home campus pre-registration, post-graduate applications, etc. Many people gave concrete instances in which a bureaucratic problem which would previously have taken weeks to resolve was taken care of within days. Others praised e-mail communications for helping them and their students (and parents) deal with various personal, institutional, national, and political crises.

Fewer than 10 percent of the responses indicated that students are using the Internet for scholarly research, discussion lists, Web-surfing, or making contact with the home-campus library or faculty. As domestic preparations and overseas resources multiply even further, this may be expected to change.

Post-Return

While respondents commented on this on-going linkage as a great way for students to keep their foreign experience "alive," less than half indicated that they knew for certain that students were indeed doing it. When linkages were noted, it was again mainly with friends made overseas and seldom with academic resources available via the Internet or the programs themselves.

The Negatives

The greatest concerns about e-mail use are often, interestingly, the obverse of the positives and seen to stem in part from a "fear" of technology (or at least its misuse) even among those who recognize its utility. The primary fear is that it is not something that enhances the overseas experience, but rather diminishes its pedagogical power and transforming value.

Advisers are concerned that too-easy online access to friends and family in the U.S. interferes with the essential cross-cultural adjustment to the new environment. As Paul DeYoung of Reed College says, "Students have become more reliant on those of us at home to solve their problems abroad. They thus lose some of the growth study abroad should bring in self-reliance." Others echo this misgiving. Joe Brockington of Kalamazoo College says "Rather than establish contact with host country nationals, students spend their time e-mailing their friends back in the U.S. or elsewhere." Jack Henderson agrees: "The principal negative I see is the use of email as the classic nearly invisible thread that spans the oceans, tugs at their attention, and keeps them refocusing on the U.S., when they should be using their time and energies to concentrate on where they are." Many students, in short, seem able to avoid the timehonored soul-searching that has traditionally been seen as a positive side effect of the occasional (or even profound) loneliness of the study abroad experience.

Moreover, putting the burden of problem solving and adaptation on the home campus encourages students (and their parents) to think that all "problems," including cross-cultural ones endemic to the foreign experience, can be "solved" quickly, on familiar terms, and by someone else. This shift of the burden also increases the volume of work for domestic and overseas advisers and administrators. As Deborah Good notes: "These students and their parents expect service. It is a matter of attitude. I believe that learning to do without while residing in another country is one of the lessons of study abroad." Or, as Wayne Myles of Queens University (Canada) puts it: "Student tolerance for waiting has dropped; the `I want it and I want it now' syndrome prevails. Frustration increases quickly if information is not available or of answers are not immediately forthcoming. Whereas before students muddled through and adapted as best they could, some students now refer back to their home campus on every small detail."

As the use of e-mail grows in volume and impact, the challenge is to find ways to maximize e-mail's capabilities for replacing slower and more expensive modes of what nevertheless remain essential communications between "here" and "there"--ways that deepen a student's human contact with the physical and cultural realities of another place. We are not yet at a point where "there" becomes a replication of "here," in spite of many globalizing uniformities. The imperative is to use these new technologies to help students and ourselves understand and celebrate human multiplicity.

BILL HOFFA is an independent consultant in international education.