Top 10 Tips For Creating Immersions

Please contact Shawn Dillard, Program Director, Short-term Programs and Immersions (sdillard1@usfca.edu) for additional guidance and support to develop your immersion.

  1. Begin working with the Center for Global Education to review your program and to assess risk early. This is particularly important if your itinerary will include adventure activities that carry risks (long hikes, kayaking, swimming). Advance planning is key (15-20 months prior to program start date is typical). Please consult CGE's planning timeline.
  2. Find good in-country partners. Most are flexible and will build upon and/or incorporate your ideas and learning goals. Pick an immersion location that you are interested in and are at least somewhat familiar with, but make sure the course content reflects, not only the subject, but the location of the class. What does teaching the course in this location add to the content? If the class is something that could be taught in San Francisco with Zoom, you are not doing enough to integrate place and content.
  3. Plan to meet with your students a few times before the program begins. This will build rapport and allow the students to get to know you and each other; it also helps you to set the stage and to develop expectations before you leave. It is also a good time to talk about cultural differences and give the students a sense of what to expect.
  4. Develop a balance between the academic and the experiential and when in doubt, experience over lecture. Short-term immersions are academic courses, so there should be assignments that reflect the CLOs, but allow time for open exploration of the immersion location and embed lots of reflection throughout the experience. Many faculty assign reflection journals with some prompts and some open journaling. 
  5. Set clear policies for students and stick to them. Follow the guidelines of CGE and the university (students must always use the buddy system, curfew, no drugs, certain activities are prohibited - like ziplining and bungee jumping). Also set behavioral expectations; immersions are small groups, so talk about inclusivity and not leaving anyone out. 
  6. Build down-time into the schedule. Do not fill the schedule all day, everyday. Give the students time to explore on their own and you will need some quiet time to yourself as well.
  7. Be flexible and have back-up plans. It is travel, there is always something that happens to change the plans (weather, train strikes, illness). The more prepared you are ahead of time, the easier it will be. Also, make it clear to students from the beginning that changes are likely to occur in the program and that flexibility and adaptability are crucial skills for global engagement. 
  8. Be budget-minded in your planning to keep the costs reasonable for students. If an activity is really important to you, build it into the program fee, rather than make it optional. Optional activities may make students who have less money feel left out.
  9. Build as many interactions with local communities as possible into your immersion. As part of your pre-departure orientations, talk to students about the best ways to engage with local communities to be a good guest.
  10. Schedule a final reflection session with the students a few weeks after your return (or at the beginning of the fall semester if you go in the summer). It gives a sense of completion to the program and provides a different perspective after being home for a few weeks.