The number of UK students traveling around the world as a part of their education in on the rise.

UK’s class of 2014 saw a 24 percent increase in involvement in Education Abroad, said Anthony Ogden, executive director of Education Abroad and Exchanges.

About 1,080 of the graduating students completed classes, research, internships, service learning or teaching experiences abroad, said data analyst and security manager for Education Abroad Jason Hope. About 900 of the 2013 graduates did so.

The last year saw a huge increase in the amount of students in international internships, Ogden said, and service learning is also becoming more popular as students become aware of options other than study abroad.

Ogden credited part of the increase to information used in Major Advising Pages, guides that were developed by department faculty members to help students locate programs that could be beneficial to them.

Over the last two years, Education Abroad and professors have been mapping out ways to integrate an abroad experience into undergraduate coursework, Ogden said, concentrating on the best times and ways to gain international experience.

“We’ve already done the work for you,” said Ogden.  The MAPs will be developed for about 95 percent of majors by December, Ogden said, aside from tracks like education, which has a tight curriculum and requires outside evaluation, and the other two-to-three departments that chose not to work on MAPs.

As an adviser, even if students don’t gravitate toward a certain program in the MAPs, the guides can be a starting point for looking into different opportunities, said Beth Barnes of the school of Journalism and Telecommunication.

“It’s now part of UK 101 to talk about education abroad … they’re at least getting part of what these possibilities should be,” Barnes said.

Traditionally, U.S. students choose to study in western Europe, Ogden said. With the increase in participation came diversification of the locations where students chose to study, from a move south to Latin America and more programs all over Africa and Asia.

“If you want to go to Barcelona because it’s a sexy city, but they don’t offer anything for you, why would you want to spend money there?” said Ogden.  The number of UK students in western Europe is declining, Ogden added.

Students are also becoming more willing to study abroad as they find programs that are affordable and weigh the cost against a lack of international experience, Ogden said.

“It’s not enough to study history in Lexington, maybe you need to go touch, see where the history happened,” Ogden said. “We need to graduate students that understand international discipline.”

Education Abroad is currently making sure freshmen are informed so they can plan for the next four years, but as education abroad tends to appeal to juniors and seniors, they should be able to find pertinent information as well, Ogden said.

“There’s a whole grand world out there,” Ogden said. “We want our students to find the best program for them.”