Experiential Learning: A Definition and Exploration
Experiential learning is a powerful approach to education that emphasizes learning through direct experience and reflection. It moves away from traditional lecture-based methods, immersing students in hands-on activities and real-world scenarios. This article explores the definition of experiential learning, its historical roots, key principles, applications, and benefits.
Defining Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is often used synonymously with the term "experiential education", but while experiential education is a broader philosophy of education, experiential learning considers the individual learning process. As such, compared to experiential education, experiential learning is concerned with more concrete issues related to the learner and the learning context. In its most basic definition, experiential learning is learning by doing. It is a process by which learners gain knowledge and acquire skills through critically reflecting on a direct experience. Through reflection, the learner connects new knowledge to past experience, finds insightful patterns through analyzing the experience, and applies those new discoveries to everyday life situations. This leads to a change in thinking and behavior when encountering the next experience, whether in or out of the classroom.
Experiential learning entails a hands-on approach to learning that moves away from just the teacher at the front of the room imparting and transferring their knowledge to students. Experiential learning focuses on the learning process for the individual. One example of experiential learning is going to the zoo and learning through observation and interaction with the zoo environment, as opposed to reading about animals from a book. Thus, one makes discoveries and experiments with knowledge firsthand, instead of hearing or reading about others' experiences.
Historical Context
The general concept of learning through experience is ancient. Around 350 BC, Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics "for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them". But as an articulated educational approach, experiential learning is of much more recent origin. Beginning in the 1970s, David A. Kolb formalized experiential learning theory, though educators are in general agreement that the term "experiential learning" began with John Dewey's 1938 book, "Experience and Education," a concise distillation from lectures given late in Dewey's career as a philosopher of education. It is notable how often this single text is quoted by both proponents and opponents of experiential education nearly seven decades after its publication.
Key Principles of Experiential Learning
Several key principles underpin experiential learning:
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- Experience as the Foundation: Learning is rooted in direct experience, providing a concrete basis for reflection and understanding.
- Reflection: Reflection is a crucial part of the experiential learning process, and like experiential learning itself, it can be facilitated or independent. Dewey wrote that "successive portions of reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another", creating a scaffold for further learning, and allowing for further experiences and reflection. This reinforces the fact that experiential learning and reflective learning are iterative processes, and the learning builds and develops with further reflection and experience.
- Active Engagement: Experiential learning requires self-initiative, an "intention to learn" and an "active phase of learning".
- Meaning-Making: Experiential learning can occur without a teacher and relates solely to the meaning-making process of the individual's direct experience.
- Facilitation: Facilitation of experiential learning and reflection is challenging, but "a skilled facilitator, asking the right questions and guiding reflective conversation before, during, and after an experience, can help open a gateway to powerful new thinking and learning". While it is the learner's experience that is most important to the learning process, it is also important not to forget the wealth of experience a good facilitator also brings to the situation. However, while a facilitator, or "teacher", may improve the likelihood of experiential learning occurring, a facilitator is not essential to experiential learning. Rather, the mechanism of experiential learning is the learner's reflection on experiences using analytic skills. This can occur without the presence of a facilitator, meaning that experiential learning is not defined by the presence of a facilitator.
- Continuous Process: Dewey defines a quality learning experience as one that moves a student forward progressively to learn more and more about a worthwhile subject of inquiry. For Dewey, any educational experience can either distort or block a student's curiosity, or enhance a student's intellectual energy so that he or she wants to advance. Sound experiential learning encourages what Dewey labels "the continuity of experience," (p. 28) meaning that a student's curiosity is constantly fuelled by engaging learning experiences so that a student wants to stretch beyond known boundaries. In terms of Vygotsky's theory of the "zone of proximal development," experiential learning offers students a painless way to stretch their intellectual horizons because they are encouraged to take their experiences as seriously as any assigned textbook or classroom lecture (Vygotsky, 1986).
Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (ELM)
Kolb's cycle of experiential learning can be used as a framework for considering the different stages involved. Kolb described experiential learning as a four-part cycle that most often begins with students having a concrete experience. They then practice observation and reflection upon the concrete experience in order to comprehend the nature of their experience. They form abstract concepts that enable a single experience to be transferable to numerous other life situations, and then they test their understanding in a variety of life situations to see if their abstract concept functions in the real world.
A third example of experiential learning involves learning how to ride a bike, a process which can illustrate the four-step experiential learning model (ELM) as set forth by Kolb and outlined in Figure 1 below. Following this example, in the "concrete experience" stage, the learner physically interacts with the bike in the "here and now". This experience forms "the basis for observation and reflection" and the learner has the opportunity to consider what is working or failing (reflective observation), formulate a generalized theory or idea about riding a bike in general (abstract conceptualization) and to think about ways to improve on the next attempt made at riding (active experimentation).
Applications of Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is applicable across various disciplines and educational levels. Examples include:
- Business Education: As higher education continues to adapt to new expectations from students, experiential learning in business and accounting programs has become more important. For example, Clark & White (2010) point out that "a quality university business education program must include an experiential learning component". With reference to this study, employers note that graduating students need to build skills in "professionalism" - which can be taught via experiential learning. Students value this learning as much as industry.
- Professional Education: Professional education applications, also known as management training or organizational development, apply experiential learning techniques in training employees at all levels within the business and professional environment. Experiential business learning is the process of learning and developing business skills through the medium of shared experience.
- STEM Education: Chicago Public Schools operates eight early college STEM high schools through its Early College STEM School Initiative. The eight high schools offer four-years of computer science classes to every student. Additionally, students are able to earn college credits from local community colleges. Loving High School in Loving, New Mexico, publishes career and technical education opportunities for students. These include internship for students who are interested in science, STEM majors, or architecture.
- Experiential Learning Programs: Paradoxically, the typical classroom where experiential learning is practiced might not be a traditional classroom within a school building. In one of the best known innovative experiential learning programs at the high school level, Eliot Wigginton and the Foxfire Fund encouraged students to research the lives of people living traditional lifestyles in the Appalachian Mountains by actually traveling with his students to remote locales. Students tape recorded life stories and compiled oral histories into a nationally bestselling set of books. This was called the "Foxfire Project," and it has spawned a variety of experiential learning programs in various high schools across the country (The Foxfire Fund, 1982). Another experiential learning high school program situated outside of conventional classrooms is the Presidential Classroom, which enables high school students internationally to meet and learn from public officials about the making of public policy.
Types of Experiential Learning Activities
Across the university, experiential learning is integrated into the curricular and cocurricular activities, both on and off campus. Experiential learning is a broad term that encompases a variety of types of experiential learning activities. The university has categorized these experiential learning activities into four experiential learning categories:
- Field and Work Based Experiential Learning
- Global and Community Based Experiential Learning
- Project and Problem Based Experiential Learning
- Research and Writing Based Experiential Learning
There are numerous experiential learning opportunities in higher education that can be found in most disciplines.
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- Apprenticeship Experiences provide students an opportunity to try out a job usually with an experienced professional in the field to act as a mentor. Apprenticeships are a type of on the job training which may lead to certification.
- Cooperative Education Experiences are more extensive than internships and will usually span two or more semesters of work. Co-ops are paid professional work experiences and are tied very closely to the student's academic work. During the co-op experience students will receive ongoing advising and the co-op will be structured to meet the student's academic and/or career goals.
- Fellowship Experiences provide tuition or aid to support the training of students for a period of time, usually between 6 months to one year. They are usually made by educational institutions, corporations, or foundations to assist individuals pursuing a course of study or research.
- Field Work Experiences allow students to explore and apply content learned in the classroom in a specified field experience away from the classroom.
- Internship Experiences are job-related and provide students and job changers with an opportunity to test the waters in a career field and also gain some valuable work experience.
- Practicum Experiences are often a required component of a course of study and place students in a supervised and often paid situation. Students develop competencies and apply previously studied theory and content such as school library media students working in a high school library or marketing majors working in a marketing research firm. Practicum experiences also allow students to design and develop a project in which they apply knowledge and develop skills such as a doctoral student preparing the components of an online course.
- Service Learning Experiences are distinguished by being mutually beneficial for both student and community. Service learning is growing rapidly and is considered a part of experiential education by its very nature of learning, performing a job within the community, and serious reflection by the student. Service learning involves solving some of society's issues; such as, homelessness, poverty, lack of quality education, pollution, etc.
- Student Teaching Experiences provides student candidates with an opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and skills he or she has been developing in the preparation program.
- Study Abroad Experiences offer students a unique opportunity to learn in another culture, within the security of a host family and a host institution carefully chosen to allow the transfer of credit to a student’s degree program. Students studying a foreign language will perfect the accent and greatly expand their vocabulary--a skill retained for life.
- Volunteer Experiences allow students to serve in a community primarily because they choose to do so. Many serve through a non-profit organization - sometimes referred to as formal volunteering, but a significant number also serve less formally, either individually or as part of a group.
Benefits of Experiential Learning
Experiential learning has significant teaching advantages. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline (1990), states that teaching is of utmost importance to motivate people. Learning only has good effects when learners have the desire to absorb the knowledge.
Students, alumni, faculty, staff, employers, and community partners directly benefit from participating in experiential learning activities and they report that these opportunities helped them in many ways.
- Increased Motivation: Proponents of experiential learning assert that students will be more motivated to learn when they have a personal stake in the subject rather than being assigned to review a topic or read a textbook chapter.
- Skill Development: Through these experiences students develop communication skills and self-confidence and gain and strengthen decision-making skills by responding to and solving real world problems and processes.
- Career Preparation: Experiential learning experiences help to complete students’ preparation for their chosen careers which reinforce course content and theory.
- Enhanced Learning: This process defines experiential learning where students are involved in learning content in which they have a personal interest, need, or want.
Challenges and Considerations
Controversy has always surrounded these cornerstones of Dewey's definition of "experiential learning" for a variety of reasons. In terms of assessment of student achievement, how can teachers and administrators quantify what is essentially the quality of student learning experiences? Since so much of the history of twentieth century American education has been marked by reliance upon quantitative scoring of academic achievement through standardized testing, there has been a bypassing of the development of reliable and commonly accepted assessment tools to evaluate the educational value of quality, experientially-based learning experiences.
These assessment issues have also presented complex challenges since experiential learning programs often utilize sites other than schools. For example, in service learning, students often learn how to practice problem-solving skills in environments with marginalized populations in need of social services, or in environmentally degraded areas in need of restoration. These "learning by doing" programs that are based on the premise that the classroom is the world raise the question of who functions as an evaluating teacher of student learning, and how such potentially life-altering learning experiences can be accurately assigned a grade.
Although Dewey left the assessment issues surrounding experiential learning largely unanswered, proponents of experiential learning over the decades since Dewey's work have developed a number of evaluation tools including student generated portfolios and journals containing evidence of student academic achievement, as well as a variety of oral, written, and computer-based learning projects summarizing student learning from experience. Advocates of experiential learning often acknowledge that achievements realized by students through this approach often resist simple assessment. How can an educator quickly and accurately assess such achievements as independent thinking, flexible and creative thinking, and self-motivation to become a lifelong learner? Could a "one size fits all" standard be developed to assess students in such slippery and complex categories? The results of students undergoing learning from experience are not as subject to instant assessment simply because such learning plants potentialities in students. These potential bits of knowledge might not be manifest in an obvious way for months or years, unlike the achievement of students selecting the right answer to a multiple choice question on an exam based on a textbook reading assignment.
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To offer another form of experiential learning as an example of the difficulty of assessment, the last half century in education has witnessed a large number of outdoor environmentally-centered learning programs. These range from after-school activities that entail cleaning up an environmentally polluted site to Outward Bound programs emphasizing survival skills in a cross-disciplinary fashion. Students and educators bring a variety of different assumptions to these programs, depending on cultural background and years of experience in urban or rural settings. A program in New York State in the 1970s that offered the experience for inner-city New York City teenagers of learning a variety of survival skills in a mountainous wilderness area was strongly criticized by a number of students and their parents for not adequately preparing students for a learning experience so alien to their previous experiences. This could serve as a reminder that proper timing, setting and preparation are crucial if experiential learning is to be achieved and retained by students. If a student is not properly prepared in knowing how to encounter a fresh learning experience, and able to integrate it seamlessly with previous learning experiences, then many of the potential advantages of experiential learning will be lost.
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