Developing International Travel Experiences With Preservice Students in Communication Sciences and Disorders

Purpose: Developing international travel experiences with preservice students provides a unique opportunity that can contribute to their future professional practice, allowing students and faculty to focus on expanding their cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, and interprofessional collaboration. The authors describe and compare the service trips they undertook to promote student learning of culture and collaboration. The reason for describing these trips is to generate ideas and considerations for others interested in exploring instruction for preservice students while traveling. Method: The authors compared 11 trips to six different countries over a 15-year period. Comparisons focused on instructions before, during, and after the trips. Results: The preservice students were provided with instruction regarding culture, collaboration, and clinical skills, before and during travel. An additional overall trip debrief occurred after traveling. Conclusions: The trips allowed an opportunity for students to gain knowledge about cultural awareness, cultural responsiveness, collaboration, and clinical skills. We offer suggestions for future trips to better measure changes in student knowledge and practice.