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At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In order to describe, and analyze the short-term research abroad activity, an instrumental case study design was created. The instrumental case study was chosen as a means of allowing the facilitators/authors to communicate how they attempted to assure that the program was educative. In order to determine if the program was in fact educative and that it met its goal of being an effective research experience the authors utilized two additional research methods. The first was a document analysis of the participant’s research artifacts. Each participant was required to communicate their findings by writing a paper that was submitted for publication to an applicable research journal.

The study found that an experiential education as a pedagogical framework coupled with a short-term research abroad activity can lead to a substantive educative experience, where the authors described and analyzed attempts to ensure that the short-term research abroad program was educative, it also describes the educational assessment findings which describe what was found when the authors tested whether they, in fact, met this goal.

During the design phase of the short-term research abroad program, the authors turned to experiential education as a principle for how they would ensure that the program was grounded in an acceptable educational theory. Experiential education is a widely accepted educational practice used in experiences such as co-ops and internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and service learning.

To frame the short-term cultural research abroad program as something from which student could learn the authors utilized the National Society of Experiential Education’s (2013) list of eight principles of good practice. In order to safeguard that an activity is educative, an assessment or an evaluation of a demonstrative artifact is essential. In assessing the final artifact against a rubric or some other non-biased or less biased criteria, an educator can ensure that the student has gained new knowledge in the form of student learning outcomes (SLOs). In addition, the educator can use the results of this assessment to modify many different aspects of the experience ranging from the timing, the modality, the pre-work, even the learning outcomes themselves.

Given financial and curriculum inflexibility of some students, Universities and faculty could achieve attainment of research-based, program agnostic, SLOs by offering short-term study abroad alternatives to the traditional semester or year-long experiences. With graduates looking to enter the job market where businesses are more globalized and executive’s recognition of a need for more international experience, carefully constructed short-term study abroad programs are meaningful avenues to build those credentials.

Such offerings can be constructed as customized experiences to achieve highly integrated skills across all degree programs.

Studies on vulnerability in the workplace, although relevant, are rare because it is difficult to access. This article aims to focus on the benefits of using autopraxeography to study and step back from vulnerability at work.

Autopraxeography uses researchers' experience to build knowledge.

Autopraxeography provides a better understanding of vulnerability and the opportunity to step back from the difficulties experienced. Instead of ignoring experiences related to vulnerability, this method makes it possible to transform them into new avenues of knowledge. Moreover, it enables researchers to step back from experiences of vulnerability, thus making them feel more secure.

The main differences from other self-studies stem from the epistemological paradigm in which this method is anchored: pragmatic constructivism. The most important difference is the production of generic knowledge in three recursive steps: writing in a naïve way, developing the epistemic work and building generic knowledge.