​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

My University at Buffalo IRB (Institutional Review Board) human subjects research application for my dissertation research has been approved!

My research will comprise interviews of students and instructors to explore their exposure to, and use of, experiential learning pedagogies, along with their attitudes toward these pedagogies.

I still have to deliver and defend my dissertation proposal, so there is one more major hurdle.

Asking my past University at Buffalo Singapore Entrepreneurship students for a favor!

If you took my MGO 330 Entrepreneurship and Small Business course in 2015 or 2016, please read on, and if this applies to you, please contact me soon.

I would like to locate students who complete their class business projects during MGO 330 and either launched a new business, or used what they developed during their projects in an existing business, to get in touch with me

You can either send me a private message, or comment here and I will get in touch with you privately.

My goal is to interview a few of you who used what you learned in the Entrepreneurship courses to start a business or to grow your existing business. I would like to write a few short articles to use on my Experiential Learning blog. I also wish to let the administrators in our Singapore University at Buffalo School of Management program know about your experiences.

You can see my Experiential Learning Activities blog here:
​www.paulmcafee.com/blog---activities

This image is a word cloud built from the frequency of words used by technology (STEM) students at a university in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, in response to the survey question, "Please provide a definition in your own words of experiential learning, based on one or more courses you have taken at the university [in which you are studying]." The study that generated the word cloud took place in 2016 among technology students. That study was a mixed methods survey comprising quantitative Likert-scale type questions as well as qualitative open-ended questions.

My experiential learning research continues. This week, I interviewed a professor and a student in this program. My first learning point is that "experiential learning" is not a term that is used at this Vietnamese university. The closest word here for this type of teaching is "Active Learning." The professor knew this term because the university has been educating its professors on active learning methods in an effort move away from purely lecture-based teaching methods.

In the two one-on-one interviews this week, working on projects arose as the example most provided by both the professor and the student that they considered to be active or experiential learning. I will be transcribing these interviews this week. I will begin to analyze them in detail using phenomenological research analysis methods over the next couple of weeks. As I gather sufficient information, I will share thoughts about the feelings the professor and student expressed about active or experiential learning.

I learned a lot this week, as a researcher, but also as a teacher. The student, as he explained his feelings toward his expoure to experiential learning, opened my eyes to the challenges my students face when I have them work on projects in my classes. I am thankful to both the professor and the student for their candid and heartfelt responses during the interview. They both have contributed to improvement in my own teaching methods.

What is the difference between problem-based learning and project-based learning? These are related types of experiential learning, or as it is called in one university in which I teach in Vietnam, active learning.

There is an article in the Edutopia website that addresses this question. The article isn’t peer-reviewed, but it is thoughtful. The source link is www.edutopia.org/blog/pbl-vs-pbl-vs-xbl-john-larmer.

This is a useful starting point for differentiating problem- from project-based learning. The original article published in 2014 and was later updated in 2015. The table in the article has colored my perception of the differences between the two pedagogies. Having said that, I doubt there is a universally agreed definition for each, and I am not sure that there needs to be one. For me, what will be important will be to cite (peer-reviewed) sources for my definitions and to settle on how I want to differentiate them, if I need to do that. I use mostly project-based learning activities in my courses when the subject matter fits this teaching method. These activities usually run through the full semester.

The following tabled is from the article by John Larmer mentioned above.