By College regulation, a fixed amount of Swarthmore credit cannot be guaranteed in advance for successful completion of academic work elsewhere, domestic or abroad (except Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Penn, under the four school arrangement). This regulation expresses an important educational principle for Swarthmore, viz., all college level work submitted for credit toward the Swarthmore degree must be evaluated by the appropriate members of the Swarthmore faculty. This means that your successfully completed foreign study courses must be evaluated for Swarthmore credit when you return. There is a straightforward procedure for this, not time consuming, and when you return this office will direct you individually and specifically about this.
IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY FULLY TO DOCUMENT THE ACADEMIC WORK THAT YOU DO ABROAD for this procedure.
A. Ideally, this will involve your presentation, for each course, of a syllabus and copies of all of your assigned written work (we do NOT need graded copies, any copies will do). If the syllabus does not contain an organized and complete overview of the course - e.g., assigned readings, schedule of classes and topics treated, instructional format, written assignments - then, from your knowledge of the course, you can write out an accompaniment to the syllabus which contains all of this information. Written work includes papers or essays, exams, reports (including lab reports), language class exercises, and it is a good idea to hang onto class and reading notes. If you are required to do oral reports for one or more courses, provide a brief summary of what the report consisted of and what you read in preparation for it. Whenever possible, and it is usually possible, make an extra copy of required written work before submitting it, and hang on to it, in the event that your submitted copy is not returned to you.
B. However, (A) does not always work.
1. e.g., final exams (which often are the larger part of the course grade) in universities in the English speaking world are normally hand written under proctored conditions, only one copy of the exam exists, and it is never returned to the student. You can't change this. What you can do, if you face this examination situation, is return to your room as soon as the exam is over and, from memory, write out the questions and a brief summary of how you answered them (e.g., what readings you refered to, brief outline of your essays). This should take 30-45 minutes, two or three pages of writing.
2. On fieldwork programs, often the required field reports or papers don't begin to express what the work actually consisted of. This is normal for field work, and writing up of same. But you can present your field notes, and a brief written summary of the organization of your field work, topical or descriptive foci, time allocated to this and that, methods (e.g., interview, observation, participation) employed, consultations with program staff re your ongoing work, etc.
3. Often, there are out of class 'extras', which enhance the educational value of the course, e.g., field trips, museum visits, lectures, films. Be prepared to present a record of all of this kind of stuff, whether assigned or not, which for you was part of the educational experience.
These are guidelines, not an instruction manual. Re the documentation of work requirement, it's impossible to write a manual which will specifically gloss any and every foreign study situation in which you may find yourself. The general point is: YOU will know in full detail what you did for each foreign study course you complete while abroad. It is your responsibility to devise ways fully to represent what you did for the Swarthmore faculty members who will be evaluating your foreign study courses for Swarthmore credit. Please remember: it is the prerogative of the credit awarding departments to give you less than full credit, right down to no credit at all, for foreign study courses that they judge to be insufficiently documented. If while you are abroad you have questions, for any of your courses, about what sufficient documentation of work comprises, please be in touch either with this office or the chair of the department that will evaluate the course, or both.
The Planning Guide (Some things to Expect From Study Abroad) enjoins, "Expect to assume much more adult responsibility for managing your life on an everyday basis than you are called upon to do at Swarthmore." This is a case in point. No one supposes that presentation of your foreign study academic work will be as easy or convenient as is presentation of academic work you do while in residence at the College. But by adult standards, this is a routine kind of responsibility.
And please N.B., for any foreign study course to be eligible for evaluation for Swarthmore credit, it must receive a grade of straight C or better.