EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
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Learning from experience vs. memorizing

1/5/2020

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​This is a great article. Click the title of the article to go to The Chronicle of Higher Education to read the article.

No Textbooks, No Lectures, and No Right Answers. Is This What Higher Education Needs?
By Beth McMurtrie FEBRUARY 10, 2019 


I use project-based learning methods.
​I have my marketing students work with a local company or non-profit organization (their choice). The end product from the course - usually a segment analysis, or a marketing or promotion plan - is not pre-defined. The students have to figure it out. 
My students get frustrated. I know, because they write about how they didn't get step-by-step instructions in the end-of-year reviews of my teaching. 
The students want detailed, step-by-step instructions. I give them - through lectures, textbook readings, articles, and current new examples - the foundational knowledge that they need to complete their projects. I make myself available to mentor and coach them - to answer any questions they have - every day of the week.
The students have to apply that knowledge to a messy and complicated real-life problem to help a local business owner or non-profit organization manager. That is what they will do after they graduate.
I live with the negative comments in my course reviews because I know they students will benefit in the future.


#highereducation #unca #uncasheville #projectbasedlearning #learningfromexperience #education
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Writing my Experiential Learning Dissertation

4/22/2019

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The research for my PhD dissertation is almost complete. The analysis starts in one week, along with starting to write. The research subject and questions are:

Exploring definitions and perceived value of experiential learning at an American university in Asia.

1) What definitions of experiential learning are expressed by students, faculty, and administrators?

2) Within a classroom learning context, how do participants describe teaching and learning related to experiential learning? Specifically, how do: 

 a. students describe their own classroom experiences with experiential learning? 

  b. instructors describe their experiences with experiential learning?

 c. administrators describe their understandings of the ways in which instructors and students experience and engage in experiential learning?

3) What value, if any, do students, faculty, and administrators ascribe to experiential learning?

During this research, which involved interviews of students, instructors, and academic administrators, I was impressed by the insights and thoughtfulness of many of the students. Interview questions included asking about the value of experiential learning, its challenges, and definitions from the students' perspectives. Here is one student's statement of value:

"I think it enables me to ... be more adaptable. Yeah, because it puts me in a situation likes there's no predictability. I have no idea what I'm going to face next. So it keeps me on my toes ... enables me to think fast and be more ... malleable, yeah."

Here is another quote from a student who is defining experiential learning:

"I think experiential learning is ... a more active form of learning ... it doesn’t involve just like the lectures and the spoon-feeding that most Asian education systems are like ... Asian education system is ... it’s very common to have the lecture style of teaching in Asian schools, but I feel that the program [I am in now] is more of interactive ... We did class group projects and discussions in class. So it’s more about like an active engagement in the content that we’re learning. It’s not simply just memorizing from the textbooks. So I feel that yeah, it’s like we get to interact first hand with practicalities of the content that we’re learning."

Several students identified social loafers among the challenges of experiential learning. For example:

"I guess one of those would be social loafer where people do not put in as much effort as you do, and perhaps also the level of motivation, because maybe some people are not as motivated to accomplish this task."

There is so much more. For the next two months, I will be analyzing the interview data to code and categorize the interviews, and then to identify themes. Listening to the students during the interviews was a treat. I look forward to revisiting the interview transcripts and the recordings to conduct the analysis. More updates will follow.

Image reference

Bergsteiner, H., et al. (2010). "Kolb's experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective." Studies in Continuing Education 32(1): 29-46.
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Experiential Learning in Vietnam

8/3/2018

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I recently led a workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on my research at a Vietnamese STEM university. I co-led a workshop on Project-Based Learning methodology. The two workshops were:

22 August
Experiential Learning Methodology Workshop with Mr. Paul McAfee

23 August
Training on "Project-Based Learning" with Ms. Nguyen Thi Huyen and Mr. Paul McAfee
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August 22 Experiential Learning Research
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Project-Based Learning Workshop
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experiential learning at a vietnamese stem university

5/11/2018

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Bergsteiner et al. (2010, p. 36) schematic describing student involvement in teaching methods. The authors adapted this model from Svinicki and Dixon (1987).
​I passed my Research Experience Component presentation yesterday. This clears me to deliver and defend my dissertation research proposal. One more milestone out of the way. Message me if you would like a copy of the paper.
In the illustration above, we see the four quadrants of the D. A. Kolb (1984/2015) Experiential Learning Theory cycle, with the distinction of the “student as actor” and the “student as receiver.” The two axes represent student activities, moving from a relatively passive role (student as receiver), for example, lecture analogies or descriptions, to the student acting, as in fieldwork. I find Figure 4 to be a useful tool to identify experiential learning activities because it presents the activities as continua rather than as discrete and separate. In the following table, Bergsteiner et al. (2010) created a visual framework that could be helpful in categorizing experiential learning activities and in explaining experiential learning to survey and interview participants.
Following is a video of the slides from my presentation (no audio).

Exploratory Study of Experiential Learning at a Vietnamese STEM University from Paul McAfee on Vimeo.

References

Bergsteiner, H., Avery, G. C., & Neumann, R. (2010). Kolb's experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective. Studies in Continuing Education, 32(1), 29-46. doi:10.1080/01580370903534355

Kolb, D. A. (1984/2015). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

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    Paul mcafee

    This blog summarizes research about active and experiential learning that I have read, and research that I have conducted.

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