Learning Experience Design – Ecotourism Exchange Program for Chinese International Students

Abstract

According to the Chinese Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China’s (2020) press release Statistics on Chinese Learners Studying Overseas in 2019, a total of 6,560,600 Chinese nationals had studied abroad from 1978 to 2019. A large group of Chinese international students began to participate in overseas summer camp programs beginning in the 1990s, most of their trips are self-funded and organized by travel agencies. Did these students enjoy a meaningful learning experience? How would someone develop a summer camp program? Had the camps provided students an educational cultural immersion experience? Can we prepare students to be responsible young travelers through those programs? Inspired by the capstone project in DES 712 Sustainable Design Practice course, I decided to use the user experience design and instructional design approach to tackle this problem. This research paper describes a systematic design approach to determine if online courses in a virtual exchange program can be developed with the focus of providing students an American cultural immersion experience.