How Higher Education Programs Measure the Impact of Intercultural Learning
A look at how Washington State University Vancouver built pre and post assessment into its BaCE program
The Need to Show Evidenced Impact
Most colleges and universities that invest in intercultural programming already believe in its value but they also need meaningful evidence that their efforts are making a difference. A provost asks for metrics of effectiveness.A grant renewal requires outcomes data. The head of study abroad programming wants to see how participation increases students’ global preparedness. These are important questions and the IDI provides the data that can answer them.
How WSU Vancouver Built Assessment Into BaCE
Washington State University Vancouver faced this exact situation with its Building a Community of Equity program, known on campus as BaCE. The certificate program was designed to build intercultural capacity among faculty and staff, but like many programs of its kind, it lacked a way to demonstrate growth beyond participant feedback and attendance numbers. You can read the full outcomes in our case study on the WSU Vancouver program.
The university addressed this by building assessment directly into the program design. Participants completed the Intercultural Development Inventory before beginning BaCE and again after finishing it. Comparing results before and after the program gave WSU Vancouver a documented shift in participants' Developmental Orientation, evidence that the program was doing what it set out to do.
What the IDI Measures
The IDI does not measure how much someone knows about other cultures. It measures how a person or group currently makes sense of and responds to cultural differences, placing that orientation somewhere along the Intercultural Development Continuum. Development is not something you can assume happened because people attended a workshop or completed a certificate. It has to be measured, and it has to be measured in a way that reflects what changes when someone becomes more capable of working across cultural differences.
The IDI was built for exactly this purpose. It has been used with more than one million people across more than four thousand organizations and educational institutions, and the research behind it has been cited in more than one hundred academic publications. You can explore that research directly through the IDI's Research and Publications library.
A Model Other Campuses Can Use
For academic leaders weighing whether to build assessment into their own programming, the WSU Vancouver example offers a useful template. Pre and post assessment does not need to be complicated or disruptive to a program's existing structure. It requires identifying the right points in a program to measure, either working with or becoming an IDI Qualified Administrator to interpret results responsibly, and being willing to let the data tell you something, whether that is confirmation that a program is working or a signal that it needs adjustment.
What the Assessment Does Not Do
The IDI does not sort participants into fixed types, and it is not a judgment of anyone's character or capability. It identifies a starting point and gives programs a way to track progress. and move fromassuming impact to demonstrating it.
Related Reading
For more on how a validated framework like the IDI holds up outside higher education, see how companies build the business case for inclusive leadership development and how government agencies build cultural competence at scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you measure the impact of an intercultural learning program?
By assessing participants before and after the program with a validated instrument like the IDI, then comparing changes in their Developmental Orientation. This provides documented evidence of effectiveness and impact, rather than an assumption based on attendance or feedback alone.
Who administers the IDI on a college campus?
Only a trained IDI Qualified Administrator can administer the assessment, interpret results, and facilitate debriefs. Campuses can train their own staff to become Qualified Administrators or work with an external one.
Can the IDI be used to evaluate a single workshop, or only longer programs?
It works best around programs with enough duration and structure to plausibly produce a shift, such as a certificate program or a semester long initiative. A single one hour workshop is unlikely to move the needle enough to register clearly.