One of the sea changes in higher education from a generation ago is the rise of study abroad. Today, a semester or year at a foreign destination is a standard expectation for many if not most college students.

For more than ten years I’ve been asked by colleges to feature these programs in their marketing materials. I have found that the reality of study abroad is hard to capture. Obtaining useful original photography is a challenge. There are photographers who will gladly visit a study abroad site, but of course there are costs. Since most institutions sponsor or participate in multiple programs, you really need to have a photographer visit several locations around the world.

(At this point I need to include a shout-out to my friend and colleague, Melody Ko, who travelled for me with a service mission to rural Nicaragua to shoot a feature for the Tufts viewbook. She is a great talent who was wiling to undergo significant hardships to bring back moving and heartfelt images.)

You can ask students at the sites to forward images but the vast majority of images they send are snapshots that they take on weekends when they are visiting tourist destinations. Used in a brochure, these don’t capture the study abroad experience particularly well.

The problem in part is that the profound educational experience that occurs during study abroad cannot be easily captured in static words or images. Often the life-changing experience grows out of unstructured parts of everyday life – as part of a home stay, making international friends and overcoming the challenges of living in a foreign country. You can ask students to write about their experiences abroad. The quality of their account depends upon their skill as writers.

Enter social media. One of the many great benefits offered by a social media approach to college communications is its ability to depict the richness of the study abroad experience in an honest, multi-layered and student-centered way. This is something I’ve learned first-hand by watching the evolution of the UMBC social media aggregator site that was launched a month ago. If you look at that site, you will see the way that photos, Tweets and videos from abroad are blended into the overall presentation of the institution. UMBC happens to be a public institution that has a fairly strong but largely overlooked study abroad capacity. The aggregator site brings the reality of study abroad experiences alive in real time, while they are happening. I don’t think a prospect could spend much time on this site without understanding the global dimension to a UMBC education.

The UMBC site is just the start. As social media apps become more sophisticated, it will be possible for current and prospective students to understand that contemporary education does not just take place on a campus but at sites and locations across the globe. Social media offers a wonderful new tool for marketing study abroad.