Two lecturers who design and lead experiential learning activities for American students studying history and communication in London will share practical approaches, lessons learned and teaching moments from the field. The session will explore how experiential activities can be intentionally designed to align with adult learners’ motivations, creating more engaging, meaningful and memorable study abroad experiences.
This session will incorporate an experiential learning activity that will take place outside of the venue. 
Learning outcomes:
1. Explain how adult learners’ motivations shape engagement during experiential learning.
2. Identify factors that make experiential learning activities engaging and memorable. 

Presented by: William Kelvin, Lecturer, Fordham University and Ian Stone, Lecturer and Historian.

The student experience is more often than not front of mind when we think about study abroad, and rightly so. ​How​ though do we​, as practitioners​, manage compliance and institutional effectiveness in an ever challenging regulatory environment without sacrificing what we are able to offer students? And in fact, how might we actually enhance the study abroad experience while creating a cross-institutional culture of compliance amidst staffing and budget concerns?
This session will look at how NYU London’s newly formed Immigration, Compliance, and Institutional Research team has leveraged technology to meet growing student and institutional needs including digitising right to study checks, streamlining attendance monitoring and compliance, systematising large scale evaluation and assessment, as well as developing institutional apps and dashboards that ​a​utomate allocations for ticketed event and track BCA metrics.
Presented by: Aaron Reynolds, Assistant Director of Immigration, Compliance, and Institutional Research, Kate Atwell, Senior Manager for Student Immigration and Placements, Leah Lafond, Operational Insights and Compliance Manager, and Chris Buck, Senior Analyst for Global Planning and Research, NYU London

Study abroad has embraced reflection, but have we made it too safe, too contained, and too easy to complete without changing what students actually do? Reflection journals, discussion prompts, and post-experience debriefs can help students make meaning, yet reflection often becomes the endpoint of learning rather than the beginning of a different way of engaging. Students reflect, submit, and move on.
This interactive workshop challenges participants to reconsider that familiar pattern. Drawing on an exploratory case study of students’ intercultural development and language acquisition through study abroad service learning, as well as experiential-learning traditions that connect reflection with subsequent action, the workshop introduces a Reflect–Act cycle for study abroad. The approach “rewilds” reflection by moving it out of the confines of a retrospective assignment and reconnecting it to the unpredictable, relational, and ongoing experience of being abroad. Students reflect on an encounter, examine assumptions and responses, make a subsequent choice or engage differently, and then return to reflection as the consequences of that action create new learning.
Rather than spending most of the session listening to a presentation, participants will work with the Reflect–Act approach themselves. After a brief research grounding and introduction to the framework, participants will examine common study abroad practices, including orientation, excursions, housing, coursework, community engagement, service learning, and informal interactions with the host community—to identify where reflection currently ends rather than leads somewhere.
Working individually and collaboratively, participants will use a Reflect–Act Program Design Audit to investigate one element of their own programming. They will ask: What are students being asked to notice? What assumptions might need to be questioned or unlearned? Whose perspectives are centered? Where could students be encouraged to decenter themselves and engage differently? Most importantly, what authentic opportunity comes next in which students can act on what they have learned?
Participants will then redesign that program element so that reflection deliberately influences a later decision, relationship, interaction, or experience. Small-group exchange will allow participants to test their redesigns with colleagues, compare approaches across institutional and cultural contexts, and co-create additional strategies for incorporating iterative Reflect–Act cycles into study abroad. The workshop will conclude by identifying practical ways these approaches can support deeper engagement and help students move from simply passing through a host community toward learning how to participate within it.
Participants will leave with a completed redesign of one component of their own study abroad programming and a reusable Reflect–Act Program Design Audit that can be adapted for other program elements.
 By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
*Apply the Reflect–Act Program Design Audit to additional aspects of study abroad programming.
*Distinguish retrospective reflection from iterative reflection designed to influence subsequent action.
*Identify opportunities for unlearning, decentering, and meaningful engagement within existing study abroad experiences.
*Redesign one element of their own programming so that reflection intentionally shapes what students do next.

Presented by: John Gunderson, Associate Professor of Spanish and Study Abroad Coordinator, Bethany Lutheran College

Mezirow (1991) defines transformative learning (TL) as “the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel about the world” and is concerned with “changing these structures …to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrative perspective” (p. 167). Global and intercultural learning experiences can result in both transformative learning, however, immersion alone is generally insufficient to achieve these aims (The Forum in Education Abroad).
Transformative learning through study abroad is possible, requiring intentional design practice and facilitation (Brewer and Ogden, 2019; Hudson and Morgan, 2019) and for staff to model critical reflection and promote a holistic approach to student learning (Jarman, et al., 2022). Gaining international real-world experience in this way can provoke the student to challenge their assumptions, values and unique world-view (Cook, 2015), truly providing a transformative experience; or at least laying the foundation for this. The benefits of TL include improved critical thinking ability, intercultural awareness, problem-solving ability, intrapersonal intelligence (ELM learning) – holding immense organisational value (Sokolova, 2025).
How can we ensure that our internships consistently provide transformational learning? Is this even possible? Is it completely necessary for all students to undergo this process or is it enough for some students to ‘just’ gain industry knowledge and work in an international environment? Let’s explore together.
This workshop aims to be collaborative, rooted in our real-life practice and a critical enquiry of key questions.

Presented by: Jarelle Smith, Experiential Education Manager, Foundation for International Education (FIE)