Evaluation of Exchange Program

Every year hundreds of our UG students will go on overseas exchange and similar number of students from all over the world will come to study at HKUST.   In order to assess the learning outcomes arising from such exchange experience and examine the factors affecting the effectiveness of such programs, CELT, at the request of Dean of Students, conducted a study to investigate the experience and learning outcomes of outgoing and incoming exchange students at HKUST.

The objectives of this research were four-fold:

1. To examine the characteristics of students going on exchange, both outgoing and incoming
2. To provide a descriptive summary of the exchange experience of students
3. To assess the impact of the exchange experience on students’ intercultural competence
4. To investigate the effect of program features and student characteristics on the development of intercultural competence

Data collection

For the outgoing exchange students, there were three rounds of data collection, all done through online, which included a pre-exchange, a during-exchange and a post-exchange survey.  For the incoming students, there were two rounds of data collection were conducted, one when they just arrived and another when they were about to leave.

Sample

All outgoing and incoming exchange students in fall 2012, spring and summer 2013 were invited to participate in the study through email.  A total of 532 outgoing exchange students and 264 in-coming ones participated in the study.