Experiential Education in The College Context

Jay Roberts, Ph.D.
Earlham College

Introductions

Overview

Why Experiential Education and Why Now?

Definitions

Methodologies of Experiential Education

Discussion

Instruction vs Learning

Learning communities

Collaborative assignments and projects

Service learning, community based learning

Undergraduate research

Internships and project-based learning

Diversity/global learning

Immersion experiences

1. A professor who excited me about learning

2. Professors who cared about me as a person

3. A mentor who helped me pursue my goals and dreams

4. Work on a project that took a semester or more to complete

5. Internship or job that allowed me to apply my learning

6. Extremely active in extracurricular activities and organizations

3% agreed to all 6.

1993 All web pages could fit on 1 8X12 page

End of that same year. 10,000 web pages

Data->Information->Knowledge->Wisdom

8,600 in 2008

122,000 in 2018

‘Place-based colleges’ are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet, said the Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a conference on Friday.

Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university,” he argued at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif. “College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based.”

from: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/bill-gates-predicts-technology-will-make-place-based-colleges-less-important-in-5-years/26092

Facebook Story: if someone from the 1950's suddenly appeared, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?

I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to humankind.

And I use it to look at funny videos of cats

Emotion

Patterns

Reflection

Social

Metacognition

Misconceptions

Unpredictability

American Academy for the Advancement of Science:

“As biology faculty, we need to put the “depth versus breadth” debate behind us. It is true today, and will be even more so in the future, that faculty cannot pack everything known in the life sciences into one or two survey courses. The advances and breakthroughs in the understanding of living systems cannot be covered in a classroom or a textbook. They cannot even be covered in the curriculum of life sciences majors.

The time has come for all biology faculty, but particularly those of us who teach undergraduates, to change the way we think about teaching..." (2009)

Wicked Problems

Unscripted

Contested and Complex

Dispersed responsibility and power

High potential for unforeseen consequences

Uncertain, unclear data

Time stress

Generation "Z"

"Liberal Arts"

"Likes"

Hands-on learning

Real world experience

Professional opportunity

Small class sizes

Personal connections

More efficient, more inexpensive, more career aligned

"By using the phrase “disrupting ourselves” ... I am asserting that one key source of disruption in higher education is coming not from the outside but from our own practices, from the growing body of experiential modes of learning, moving from margin to center, and proving to be critical and powerful in the overall quality and meaning of the undergraduate experience. As a result, at colleges and universities we are running headlong into our own structures, into the way we do business." (Bass, 2012)

"These pressures are disruptive because to this point we have funded and structured our institutions as if the formal curriculum were the center of learning, whereas we have supported the experiential co-curriculum (and a handful of anomalous courses, such as first-year seminars) largely on the margins, even as they often serve as the poster children for the institutions’ sense of mission, values, and brand. All of us in higher education need to ask ourselves: Can we continue to operate on the assumption that the formal curriculum is the center of the undergraduate experience?" (Bass, 2012)

Contact Information:
Jay Roberts
roberja@earlham.edu
Twitter: JayWRoberts
Website:JayWRoberts.com

Active Learning

Community-Based Learning

Integrative Learning

Problem-Based Learning

Experiential education has to be outside the classroom

Experiential education involves being active with your body in some way

Experiential education is only applicable in applied fields

Experiential education is just learning by doing

You can't lecture in experiential education

Experiential education is a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection.

Key Principles

1. UNSCRIPTED

The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking and uncertainty, because the outcomes of experience cannot totally be predicted.

2. STUDENT CENTERED

Throughout the educational process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.

3. AUTHENTIC

Experiences are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, experience natural consequences, and be accountable for results.

4. INTEGRATED

Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis and synthesis.

Service Learning

Active Learning

Problem-Based Learning

Cooperative Learning

Inquiry-Based Learning

Community-Engaged Learning

Work-Integrated Learning

Game-Based Learning

Place-Based Learning