Are factory visits experiential learning?

If asked, I would suggest that a visit to a factory, where students could see examples of the processes about which they are learning, would count as experiential learning (or active learning, as it would be called here in Ho Chi Minh City). I also would admit to an argument that a visit of this type is really just an illustrated lecture. Still, I think that the students will remember what they saw - and experienced - better from the factory visit than from a lecture with photos.

I took my Keuka College Operation & Production Management students to visit the Yakult probiotic drink "factory" yesterday. Really, I would prefer to call it a production facility. It is clean, shiny, and highly automated. The students saw batch processing, which was the making of the probiotic "seed." They saw flow shop example, which was the continuous flow processing of the drink once the probiotic seed was created. They saw a very small number of people producing thousands of drinks per hour. We chatted about what they saw on the bus ride back to the university. I believe the students will remember this trip longer than they will remember the lecture on types of production processes.

The photo is with the students following the tour. Yakult does not permit photography within their production facility.