Academics Abroad/Away

Courses may be delivered to you in formats that differ from at St. Olaf, each with varying levels of expected student interaction.  At. St. Olaf, teaching is typically interactive with students, regardless if a course is lecture, seminar, or workshop-based, even tutorial, — students are asked to be active participants in class.

At other institutions elsewhere in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world, students may have a less active role in their education.  Common types of course instruction are: lecture, seminar, workshop, and tutorial.  Courses may be taught in a single format or may combine formats.   You may even have multiple types of instruction within one course, with lecture being held on one day of the week and seminar/tutorial on another.

Lectures will teach you the main topics of your course and often take place in large lecture theatres and may be delivered to students on multiple sections of a course together.  Sometimes lectures may occur in smaller classrooms where they are delivered just to students in your section of a course — this would be similar to days when your St. Olaf professor is giving you a lecture on a specific topic being studied in your course.  Lectures are the most formal of instruction type.  Lectures often involve very little student participation and do not tend to allow opportunity for discussion or debate. At many universities, attending lectures is required.   Courses taught in lecture format at other institutions may even be recorded for repeat/later viewing.  It is also common for courses to devote one day of the week, sometimes for multiple hours, to large format lecture (perhaps given to multiple sections) and another day of the week to seminar or workshop to explore the topic in more detail.

Seminars are smaller group discussions led by an academic (often a PhD student who might not be the professor-on-record or the same professor who provides lecture) between you and other students in your class that are an accompaniment to a lecture.  Seminars are commonly used to build up your knowledge on a topic already covered in lecture and may also expect you to utilize knowledge learned from your own reading and study.  They are an active form of learning where you’re expected to contribute to the session, typically completing group tasks and taking part in discussion and debates.  Seminar  is your opportunity to ask your instructor/tutor any questions about that topic that you may have.

Tutorials are one-on-one or small group sessions with you and your subject tutor.  This style of teaching is most common at our Oxford University programs (Harris Manchester College and CMRS).  Under tutorial style teaching, you will get tailored instruction on the specialized subject matter you’re studying under your tutors supervision.

Workshops are typically separate from lectures and seminars and are often seen as an optional “extra”.  They are a good way to add to the information learned in lectures and seminars. While they may be “extra,” it is wise to treat them as obligatory as they offer valuable contributions to your studies.

January Term programs offer a wide variety of activities. Most take place entirely abroad or away from campus, though some may include on-campus classes or lectures.  Students may engage in activities like field excursions, interactions with local cultures and communities, and lectures. Participants in these programs are fellow St. Olaf students.

Teaching Styles

In the U.S., teaching is often more interactive and less dependent on rote memorization.  Students regularly ask questions and engage with the faculty during class.

At direct enroll universities abroad,  teaching may be less interactive.  Students may not be expected to interact with the faculty and it may inappropriate to do so during class.

Student Dress

In the U.S., students and faculty ten to dress rather informally.  Elsewhere, students and faculty will dress more formally when attending or teaching class.  It may not be acceptable to go to class wearing leggings, sweatpants, hoodies, etc.

In the U.S. it is common for you to be assessed continuously throughout the semester using a variety of methods.  You likely have coursework (including essays and reports), group projects, presentations, and exams that occur throughout the course.  Final grades are often based collectively on these on-going assessments, a final exam/project and also often a participation grade.

Assessment for courses taught by provider programs often follows the continuous assessment model and will likely feel very similar to courses you’ve taken at St. Olaf.  You will have multiple assignments, exams/quizzes, and projects throughout the semester.  As such, you will likely have an ongoing sense of how you are doing in the course at various points in the semester.

Assessment at universities abroad can be quite different from that of U.S. colleges/universities and provider programs and is likely less transparent.   At universities abroad, it is not uncommon for students to be assessed on only a few things –most commonly one or two large exams or projects, with exams often being weighed heavily (for example, 60% of the final grade).  Because students tend to have less graded homework, they typically have more independent studying to do in order to receive good grades on the few heavily weighted assignments they do have.  Under this model of assessment, students often do not have a solid sense of how they are doing throughout the course –they’re not receiving any formal grades or feedback from week to week– and are instead only made aware of how they’re doing or did at the end of the term once final assessment has taken place.

Additionally, it is important to note that exams at direct enroll universities abroad rarely involve short-answer or multiple choice questions and are more likely to require long essays. Furthermore, expectations for papers/essays and other assignments may be quite different from what’s expected at St. Olaf.

• Understand the academic system of the program you’ve chosen:  Is the program based more on a U.S. system or the local system?  What are the key differences between St. Olaf and the program’s academic system?
• Pay attention to correspondence from your program:  Depending on the level of support of the program you choose, you may receive many messages detailing important academic information like registration processes and deadlines and you may even be assigned to an academic advisor, OR your program may send you few to no messages and instead be expecting you to seek information out on your own.   Make sure to read all correspondence and reach out to your program for any clarification early on so that there’s plenty of time.  If you don’t know when you’re registering for courses, how to register, who to go to for help if you’re struggling with a course, etc., you will need to ask for and seek out help!  Your program may have a strong expectation that you are acting independently.
•  Connect with instructors, tutors, and support staff early on:  We encourage you to make a connection with your instructors, tutors, and support staff during the first few weeks of your program to make sure that you are clear on expectations and assignments.  This can be important even if you seem to know what’s going on.  It may simply be good to meet them.  It is extra important to make these connections if your status as a study abroad/away student requires you to need to make special arrangements for your participation in the course (such as an alternative exam from what’s required of degree seeking students).
• Familiarize yourself with the support structures of your program:  Have you been assigned an academic advisor?  A local peer student guide?  Are there tutoring opportunities?  Is there an academic support center?  Are there study sessions/review groups?  Note what your support options are, where they’re located, and how you can access them.
• Remember, you also have the Smith Center and St. Olaf’s support:  We’re happy to connect with your program to help support you, but we also want you to make the connections too.

If you need help of any kind, ask!!!