International student mobility programs at higher education level have increasingly been fostered over the past years. Most of these programs merely send students for a term abroad, but do not provide comprehensive accompanying measures before, during and after the stay. There is no doubt that through a short time of studying in another country, participants gain intercultural living and learning experience. However, some crucial questions remain: How effective and efficient are such programs in promoting intercultural learning and competence development? How can they be designed in order to foster the students' learning processes and to increase learning outcomes? This article addresses these questions and provides an example of a comprehensive study abroad program for graduate students. The article gives an overview of current research on study abroad programs and defines the term intercultural competence. It then presents the "Asian Studies in Business and Economics (ASBE) program" at the University of Paderborn (Germany) as a good practice example. The strengths of the program are: It a) consists of four master-level modules, all fully integrated into the curriculum of the Master programs; b) provides continuous and systematic accompanying measures over a long period of time (preparation, study abroad and follow-up phases); c) uses an innovative, learner- centered pedagogical design that combines individual and cooperative learning and applies -amongst others- experiential and reflective learning as well as the critical incidents technique.
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