Many studies on short-term overseas study trips offered by Institutes of Higher Learning focus on the impact on students’ learning and trajectory with little attention paid to the influence of such programmes on other stakeholders such as local communities. This paper aims to fill the gap by examining the impacts of faculty-led short-term overseas study trips on host community partners. University-community partnerships (UCP) have gained academic interest particularly in service learning, community engagement and career advancement. This paper explores how UCP can be adapted through overseas study trips covering a range of academic themes through engagement with diverse community partners.
Offered in a residential college in Singapore, these study trips take undergraduates students to diverse emerging economies like the Balkans, Botswana, Eastern Europe, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal and Vietnam. In the course of designing the programme, faculty members intentionally cultivate relationships with social welfare organisations that work with local communities to establish reciprocal learning exchanges between students and hosts. Preliminary findings from our interviews with community partners suggest that these relationships and engagements not only build trust, but also empower these host communities to view themselves as knowledge producers. The opportunity to see students and faculty from a high-income economy meaningfully engage with their work enables these communities to reconcile potential hierarchies in the partnership promoting inclusive learning. This study contributes to ongoing discourses of UCP by demonstrating how intentionally designed short-term overseas study trips can generate capacity-building, productive knowledge exchange, and mutual understanding through international partnerships.

Authors:
Angie Tan, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Lavanya Balachandran, National University of Singapore, Singapore

About the Presenter(s)
Ms Angie Tan is a University Postdoctoral Fellow or Instructor at National University of Singapore in Singapore

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