What is Experiential Learning?
Experiential education is a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.
Queen’s University
As the quote describes, Experiential Learning or Experiential Education is a learning practice where learners would take initiatives and make decisions in specially chosen learning experiences. Learners are required to actively participate and engage in the learning process by questioning, investigating, giving assumptions, solving problems, reflecting and critically analyzing. In other words, learners in the experiential learning take the lead in their learning process rather than being led by the instructors.
Below is a framework that is considered the most common structure for experiential learning named Kolb Learning Cycle.
From the framework, we could see that experiential learning occurs with previous knowledge so that new questions and planning could happen to trigger a new cycle of learning experience. By actively thinking and discovering questions, learners use existing knowledge and methodology to conduct and push for results and conclusions. Then, learners would reflect on the experience and draw new conclusions so as to critically analyze the learning cycle and get ready for future learning experiences.
Experiential Learning and Our Learning Design
Experiential Learning could be used in many circumstances such as learning about the nature and its phenomenons, learning a skill or a type of sports, and conducting a scientific experiment. This learning approach is experience-based which means learners learn through experience.
Our learning design is focused on the topic of personal finance management, which is based on many theories that are in the economics field. Learners are expected to learn through studying theories, putting the theories into given conditions and eventually applying them into practices. This approach is different from experiential learning approach and therefore, I don’t think experiential learning aligns with our chosen topic.
Reference
What is experiential learning? Experiential Learning Hub. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2022, from https://www.queensu.ca/experientiallearninghub/about/what-experiential-learning#:~:text=Experiential%20education%20is%20a%20philosophy,to%20contribute%20to%20their%20communities.
Reply to other’s blog post:
Great job on organizing your blog! It looks really neat and clean! It would be helpful if you could provide some practical examples of how the Kolb learning model, could be applied in real-life settings.
There are different ways how you could incorporate an experiential learning approach in your interactive learning resource – simulation (game) is one of them. You could create a scenario where students have to manage their personal finances; if they “win” the game, this means that they know how to apply “theories into given conditions.”
When you provide direct citations from the original text, please add the exact page/paragraph it was taken from.