Impact of International Virtual Exchange on Student Success

Abstract

This study expands the literature on high impact practices by assessing the effect of global experiences, including international virtual exchange (IVE) and study abroad, on student success, measured as GPA, first-year retention, and graduation rate. Our dataset tracks over 47,000 students over 10 years at a large U.S. university. Our fixed effects models show that IVE and studying abroad increase average GPA. Using logit models, we find that taking IVE courses or studying abroad positively impacts the probability students are retained and eventually graduate. Our findings also show that first-generation college students, financially disadvantaged students, female students, and Black and African American students who take IVE courses benefit more than their demographic counterparts who don't. Taken together, these results confirm that IVE is both a high impact practice and a pedagogy that offers significant benefits to under-resourced students and students who have historically been underrepresented in global learning activities.

Virtual International Exchange: Access, Outcomes, and Programmatic Concerns

“…Two of the articles in this special issue address questions around the outcomes of virtual exchange programs. Lee et al (2022) depict virtual exchange as a highimpact educational practice and present results that suggest that virtual exchange has a positive relationship with students' academic outcomes, namely academic achievement (measured using grade point average [GPA]), retention, and completion. Importantly, these results were found to be stronger for students from marginalized and/or historically underrepresented backgrounds, thus providing a useful connection to studies that address issues of access to virtual exchange, highlighted previously.…”

“…Moreover, this research indicates that students stand to gain much through participation in these programs. For example, if the results from Lee et al (2022) and Devereaux and Glenn (2022) are found to hold beyond the specific contexts of these two studies, then virtual international exchange should be considered a valuable teaching tool across educational levels, programs, and contexts. The articles included in this special issue that explore programmatic concerns for virtual exchange provide suggestions and even roadmaps for how educators can consider implementing these programs in schools, classrooms, and beyond.…”

“…The ways in which educators implement programs may have important consequences to who accesses virtual exchange and, ultimately, how comfortable they feel in those experiences. Articles like Giralt et al (2022) and Baralt et al (2022), which outline specific approaches to virtual exchange program design, provide insight into programmatic approaches and components that can be further explored for their contribution to the gains in student outcomes observed in Lee et al (2022) and Devereux and Glenn (2022).…”

Multifaceted challenges and opportunities: Chinese exchange students’ experiences in the U.S. transnational online learning ecology

“…Other researchers investigated Chinese students' expectations of online learning environments, which showed that Chinese students highly valued various levels of instructor presence and technology integration, such as instructors' technological competency, online teaching experience, emotional support, and effective communication (Lin, 2022;Fang et al, 2023). Some researchers focused on the benefits, faculty perceptions, and systematic considerations of virtual exchange programs in higher education during the pandemic (Lee et al, 2022;Weaver et al, 2022). However, limited research has been conducted to investigate the experiences of Chinese exchange students who enrolled in a transnational distance education program.…”