The Role of Experiential Education in Re-Thinking The Modern University
Jay W. Roberts, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof., Education and Environmental Studies
Earlham College
Introductions and Overview
A little about me
Overview
Context of current state of Higher Education
Tectonic Shifts
Re-Thinking Pedagogy in Higher Education
Experiential Education- An Introduction
3 Waves: Experiential Education in Higher Education
Some examples of Wave Three
Possibilities and Limitations
The Context: The Current State of Higher Education
Questioning the Value and Purpose of Higher Education
Recent Books
Bok (2006)- Our Underachieving Colleges
Ferrall (2011)- Liberal Arts At The Brink
Delbanco (2012)- College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be
Arum and Roksa (2012)- Academically Adrift
What They Are Saying
Students leave college unprepared
"In survey after survey, employers seem to agree that the skill they most want in future workers is adaptability. Those who hire complain that they often find today’s college graduates lacking in interpersonal skills, problem solving, effective written and oral communication skills, teamwork, and the ability to think critically and analytically. Employers say that future workplaces need those skills as well as degree holders who can come up with novel solutions to problems and better sort through information to filter out the most critical pieces."
From: http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2012/09/12/skills-gap-employers-and-colleges-point-fingers-at-each-other/
Outdated teaching and learning model
"The modern curriculum teaches little about citizenship and responsibilities and a great deal about individualism and rights. The ecological emergency, however, can be resolved only if enough people come to hold a bigger idea of what it means to be a citizen" (Orr, 32).
Lack of ethical imperative
Too vocational
"The university has shaped itself to an industrial ideal-- the knowledge factory. Now it is overloaded and top-heavy with expertness and information. It has become a know-how institution when it ought to be a know-why institution." (Rowe, 129).
It's too expensive (bad ROI)
"In 2009, spending by Americans for post-secondary education totaled $461 billion, an amount 42% greater than in 2000, after accounting for inflation. This $461 billion is the equivalent of 3.3% of total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and an amount greater than the total GDP of countries such as Sweden, Norway and Portugal."
From: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/02/opinion/vedder-college-costs/index.html
Tectonic Shifts affecting Higher Education
Technology
High Speed Connectivity
Distance learning, Video conferencing (Skype, etc), Wiki's, Crowd Sourcing, Social Media, etc.
MOOC's!
Stanford’s Sebastian Thrun made headlines in the fall of 2011 when his on-line Artificial Intelligence course enrolled over 160,000 students. According to the New York Times (“Harvard and MIT Team Up To Offer On-Line Classes,” May 2, 2012), Thrun’s new venture, Udacity, has enrolled 200,000 students into six courses thus far.
Digital Citizens and New Knowledge Processes
The University of Nowhere
‘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
Economic and Politcal Pressures
Globalism and an increasingly "flattened" world
Global recession and credit crisis (student loan debt in US exceeds total credit card debt for first time in 2012)
Funding: Efficiency efforts and cost containment
College Attendance: "In 1960, 392,000 students earned bachelor degrees. By 2007 that number had nearly quadrupled to 1.52 million."(Ferrall, 1)
Emerging Science of Learning
Explosion of brain research
"We have learned more about the brain and how it functions in the past two decades than in all of recorded history" (Wolfe, 3)
"Reading" the brain- CAT, PET scans, MRI
3 Key Findings
Metacognition
What does this mean for teaching?
Make it overt
Teaching process of learning over content
Less is More
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. A more tenable approach is to recast the focus of biology courses and curricula on the conceptual framework on which the science itself is built and from which discoveries emerge. Such a focus is increasingly interdisciplinary, demands quantitative competency, and requires the instructor to use facts judiciously as a means of illustrating concepts rather than as items to be memorized in isolation.
The time has come for all biology faculty, but particularly those of us who teach undergraduates, to change the way we think about teaching and begin to develop a coordinated and sustainable plan for implementing sound principles of teaching and learning." (2009)
Neuroplasticity
What does this mean for teaching?
Stress and Threat
Importance of affective domains in learning
Ritual/Novelty
Parallel Processing
What does this mean for teaching?
Multi-modal instruction
Complex, mutli-sensory immersion
Enrichment keys: feedback, relevancy, challenge
Simulations, active, authentic, social learning
Transformation:
"We alll know or sense that the academy today is in the throes of transformation. The knowledge, skills, and values in which students should be educated; the intellectual landscape of the disciplines and degrees; the ways in which educational institutions are organized; the funding of teaching, learning, and research-- all of this promises to be profoundly different in 20 years. The forces of change have resulted partly from our own inertia, partly from consequences of our success, and partly from broad political, market, and technological developments not of our making. The question is not whether the academy will be changed, but how." (Scobey, 4).
Possibilities and Limitations
Student Resistance
Time commitments- this isn't my only class
Non-traditional learning and assessment
Group work- "hell is other people"
Faculty Resistance
Time commitment
Team teaching
Scaling issues (can you do this with 100 people in a class?)
Social dimensions of learning
Structural Resistance
Academic calendar
Team teaching and interdisciplinarity
Culture of Discplines
Final Queries
What would it look like if we placed experience at the center of the curriculum endeavor?
How might we put experience before labels in both big and small ways?
How can we connect students to authentic and relevant problems to be examined and worked on locally, regionally, and globally?
In times of change...
What does this new wave look like?
Oberlin Project
The Oberlin Project
"The Oberlin Project is a joint effort of the City of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and private and institutional partners to improve the resilience, prosperity, and sustainability of our community.
The Oberlin Project's aim is to revitalize the local economy, eliminate carbon emissions, restore local agriculture, food supply and forestry, and create a new, sustainable base for economic and community development."
From: http://www.oberlinproject.org/
Piedmont Project at Emory
Piedmont Project
Each summer, 20 faculty applicants from all units and departments of the University are accepted for a four-part program that offers multi-disciplinary brainstorming around sustainability issues, experiential learning about place, and pedagogical exercises designed to help faculty develop new courses or new course modules for existing courses.
Participants commit to:
-- Attend a two-day workshop usually held a few days after graduation.
-- Develop a syllabus for a new course or a course module that incorporates sustainability or environmental issues appropriate to their field.
-- Participate in a fieldtrip and discussion session at the end of the summer to share their experiences.
-- Attend a dinner meeting in March to report on experiences and intellectual process.
Mosaic Project at Dickinson
Steelton Mosaics
"...23 students and three faculty members met with workers, teachers, local business people, and residents of the multi-ethnic community of Steelton, Pennsylvania to explore questions of mutual interest: how to raise a family, earn a living, and sustain faith in a community hit hard by deindustrialization. This research later continued in the 2001 Steelton Mosaic with 18 students who focused on work, family, and migration narratives with members of the African-American community, and mentored young people in the elementary and secondary schools to conduct their own video-taped oral histories. (1996, Faculty: American Studies, Economics, and Sociology; 2001, Faculty: English, History, and Sociology – in both cases, the 3rd faculty member teaching literature contributed only one course to the Mosaic that was open to all students)."
From: http://www.dickinson.edu/academics/distinctive-opportunities/community-studies-center/content/Community-Studies-Center-Global-Mosaics/
ASU's Master's of Public Health
Public Health Program
“These are exactly the type of creative, forward-thinking results we knew would come from our partnership with ASU in downtown Phoenix,” says Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. “We are absolutely becoming the center of education, research and science. And, because of the economic challenges we all feel, the timing is particularly relevant for this exciting announcement.”
“The program will have a special emphasis on the public health needs of the multicultural populations found in urban centers, such as Phoenix,” adds Marjorie Baldwin, director of the School of Health Management and Policy, who also will be director of the new program. “We will take a broad view of public health issues, combining fundamental public health skills with competencies especially needed in urban areas, such as community and mental health, diversity, policy and ethics.”
From: https://asunews.asu.edu/20090501_business_masterofpublichealth
Experiential Education in the Modern University
Wave 1
Separation of the Curriculum and Co-Curriculum
"Extra" curriculum
Volunteering
Part-Time Jobs
Clubs, organizations, etc
Wave 2
First Tentative Linkages
Service learning emerges
Isolated "active learning"
Simulations
Student Leadership Development
Off-campus study programs
Wave 3
Integration
High Impact Learning Initiative (Hoy, 2012)
Place and Problem/Project Based
Collaborations
Thematic, Interdsicplinary Curricula
Strong and deep reflective practices
Capacity building in communities
Scaffolding and sequencing across experiences
Innovative forms of assessment focused on demonstrated learning outcomes
What is Experiential Education?
Etymology of Experience
Experience: German (erlebnis and erfahrung)
Latin: Expereri- -to test but also to risk
To be experienced, to have an experience
Common Misconceptions
It has to be outside the classroom
It's "hands on" learning
It only can apply to certain disciplines and fields
It's not rigorous
A Quick Definition
Experiential education is a philosophical approach to teaching and learning that places paramount importance on the role of direct experience in the educational process.
EE in Practice
EELDRC: A Design Framework
Enroll
Experience
Label
Demonstrate
Review
Connect
Experience before Label- Loose Parts Play
Primary vs Secondary Experience
So what is it?
Many things!
Individual/Romantic
Social/Democratic
Critical
Transformationalists
Curriculum Projects
Service Learning
Outdoor Education
Place Based Education
Education for Sustainability
Community Education
Project Based Education
Expeditionary Learning
Active Learning
Cooperative Learning
Re-Thinking Pedagogy
in The Modern University
Collaborative
Student-Student
Faculty-Student
Faculty-Faculty
Campus-Community
Integrative
School World- Real World
Curriculum-Co-Curriculum
Mind-Body-Spirit (no more brain on a stick)
Theory-Practice
Problem and Project Oriented
Active
Community Research
Civic Engagement
Development of knowledge, skills, and values
Public demonstrations of learning
New Modes of Teaching and Learning
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.
If facts are readily available, if lectures put be can be instantly on-line and available to hundred's of thousands all over the world- what are teachers for?
Teachers as Curators of Experience
To curate: Organizing, framing, designing, and making meaning
Anyone can access the raw information and experience- teachers meaningfully organize it.
Facilitation
Design
Requires not just content mastery but process mastery
Sitting at the center of much of this is
Experiential Education
With modern technology, if all there is is lectures, we don't need faculty to do it," Redish says. "Get 'em to do it once, put it on the web, and fire the faculty."
from: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/rethinking-teaching.html