• Awareness and an ability to speak to all of those critical standards • Legitimization of field/ Reputation in the field as an advocate • Motivation of members • Develop specific equity goals or diversity goals • Recognized value of the Forum’s certification product (How many orgs are using it to hire people?)
“So I think you can have kind of those hard metrics that you’re measured by. But I think to a lot of us in the field, it’s just like where do you go for the answers? So I think to me, success for the Forum is what are the things that you’re going to put out there that innovate or that become new…” - Carri “When there’s a crisis and we’re managing it, and that our policies are based on the standards. If we followed our policy, was the outcome the best we could have hoped for with that particular crisis?... So, that’s another way that I guess I would translate the Forum’s vision into tangible outcomes. Are we able to pull it off on the ground, in a practical sense, based on those outlines or those best practices that come out of the Forum?” – Tracey
“I would really like to see the Forum work on more ways to get institutions to actually, value the certification process.” – Mark
“The idea of the anecdote is important because it helps people see, themselves being involved as opposed to, X number of people, did stuff. So I think that that marriage of numbers, and stories, like for any organization really needs to, happen more, moving forward.” - Mark
■ MEASURES:
“I guess the measures really then are the number of resources that they are developing in this space, and then tracking how these resources are being used, if they’re being used, and seeking feedback to make sure they are accomplishing what the intent was.” – Kyle
• Membership renewals • Membership growth • Member engagement/online event attendance • Student participation rates in education abroad • Participation rates beyond membership • Number of research initiatives they’re supporting or championing • Number of resources developed • Measure what our students are walking away from these experiences with • Establish and measure learning outcomes of global competencies • Regular engagement survey • Use of annual report • Accreditation
“Perhaps another result that the Forum could look to is if they’re able to help the field cultivate this clearinghouse or database of international measures for study abroad, other data points than just participation rates.” - Kyle
“No one really complains about the smoothness of the highways, they complain about the potholes. So, we use as a root and a foundation best practices and standards for what we do, and that translates to, certainly from an evaluative perspective, strong outcomes and high participation rates and all those other things.” – Craig “I’ve always enjoyed the Forum’s use of their Annual Report. Primarily because it highlights what the issues of the field are on a year to year basis, and it articulates explicitly what the Forum is doing to try and address what those current issues are… one suggestion would be to try and solicit information from the membership about the ways in which they’re utilizing the Forum to address those critical issues within the field on a year to year basis, and help report that out as well.” - Craig
THE FORUM ON EDUCATION ABROAD // SOAR WHITEPAPER
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