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In some cases, both the university of origin and the study abroad provider are members. How should we proceed?

The situation is not a problem at all, as we collect information from every student about their university of origin.

At the end of each year, if the university of origin is a GCRC member, it will receive an aggregated report covering all of its students who studied abroad, including students who participated in programs in different locations and with different study abroad providers.

At the same time, each study abroad provider will receive its own analytics based on all students participating in its programs, regardless of which partner university they come from.

Study abroad providers and universities will always have access to an updated list of GCRC members. Before each program or semester begins, they can check whether their partner institution is a member and determine through which channel—the study abroad provider or the university of origin—the student should complete the assessment.

This system ensures that each student completes the assessment only once, while allowing both the university of origin and the study abroad provider to benefit from the relevant aggregated data and research results.

Follow up notifications for students about the program completion?

The student access system is not designed to collect email addresses. Therefore, SAA does not have access to students’ email addresses; only the university or study abroad provider does.

For this reason, and considering that students usually require notifications and reminders to encourage assessment completion, it is the responsibility of the study abroad provider or university to manage these communications and reminders*.

This approach also has several advantages. When students see that notifications come directly from their own university or study abroad provider, rather than from an external organization, they tend to respond more quickly. In addition, fewer messages are likely to end up in the spam folder.

Partners can also benefit from distributing notifications and reminders through their own Learning Management Systems (LMS) or other internal communication channels, which can further increase student participation and completion rates.

*) If you want us to be responsible for sending those reminders via email we can quote separately

Implementation of the Global Experiential Certification: Optional or Mandatory?

Each program will need to determine the appropriate level of rigor for implementing the Study Abroad Experiential Certification assessment. While a minimum student participation rate of 60% is required in order to use the institutional certification badge, we strongly recommend actively encouraging students to complete the assessment.

Universities of origin and study abroad providers may use different incentives to increase participation. For example, they may offer extra academic credit, recognition, certificates, or other benefits to students who complete the assessment.

The specific approach and incentives used should be determined by each university or study abroad partner according to its own academic policies and program objectives.