I expect to begin my Ph.D. in Education dissertation research the Asian campus of a large American university within the next two months. If you are teaching in that program, or if you are a student who has studied in, or graduated from, that program, and if you would like to participate, please contact me. I will add you to the list and get in touch once I start to recruit for the research. Please use the contact form on this website.
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 My first paper, titled "Experiential learning pedagogy interviews in a STEM program at a Vietnamese university in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)," is complete. I consider this a draft and will receive feedback from one of my professors in the near future. The next paper will be my research proposal for my dissertation. Following is the abstract from the paper I completed. I would be happy to discuss the research if any of my friends or associates are interested. "This study reports on two pilot studies that I conducted at a STEM university in Vietnam. The first was a 2016 survey of students’ exposure to and attitudes toward experiential learning. The mixed methods survey comprised closed-ended Likert-type scale and open-ended questions. The second study was a set of interviews in 2017 of instructors at the university with the same research topic. The interview questions sought more detail about students’ feelings toward experiential learning, plus instructors’ use of, and feelings toward, those methods. Both studies found wide use of experiential learning methods as well as broad appreciation for those methods among the instructors and students. These studies were pilots intended to provide background for the design of my dissertation research. The primary audience for this report is the administration of the university in which I conducted the studies." The research included a survey of students at the university, asking them about the types of experiential learning the had encountered, and their attitudes toward the methods. The image at the top is a graph from the responses to one question. Here is one of the illustrations in the paper showingfoundational experiential learning theorists, from Kolb (1984/2015). D. A. Kolb’s (1984/2015) figure connecting the three foundational experiential learning theorists with contemporary applications of these theories (p. 18).
Reference Kolb, D. A. (1984/2015). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. My first paper summarizing the 2016 student survey and the 2017 instructor and student interviews at the STEM university in Vietnam is in the final editing stage. Here were the questions for the 2017 interviews:
Questions of Interest for Student Interviews:
Questions of Interest for Instructor Interviews:
In the conclusion, I should offer recommendations for future research, and possibly for improvement in teaching methods. The U.S.A.-Vietnamese organization, Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF), published a report in 2006 that covers general recommendations at several levels of education management. I am sharing their suggestions for the university level. The VEF list is long, so first I'll share my simplified suggestion for improvement: Conduct an annual assessment of instructors' use of, and students' exposure to, experiential (or active) learning methods. Ask them what they have done, how the methods affected their learning, and how they feel about the methods. Create a double loop feedback system that informs instructors of opportunities for improvement based on what is learned from the annual assessment. Here is what VEF suggested. The following is verbatim but without quotes. A scenario for change led by individual universities includes the following activities to be considered:
Reference Stephen, W., Doughty, P., Gray, P., Hopcroft, J., & Silvera, I. (2006). Observations on undergraduate education in computer science, electrical engineering, and physics at select universities in Vietnam. Retrieved from https://home.vef.gov/download/Report_on_Undergrad_Educ_E.pdf. As I write my analysis of active and experiential learning in my 2016 student surveys and 2017 instructor and student interviews at a STEM university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I am trying to use technology tools. What I have discovered is that the learning curve is steep. There are three tools I am using:
Back to the writing grind ... Paul I have realized two important things about my 2017 interview process.
I am deep into analyzing data from a 2016 student survey that I conducted in a STEM program at a science university in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. There were 71 substantive respondents who answered all or most of the open- and closed-ended question.
The survey's purpose was to determine the extent to which these students had been exposed to any type of experiential earning activity in their university courses. The survey also explored how the students felt about the experiential learning activity. The image above shows the responses of 67 students who indicated that they prefer experiential learning classes. Of these students, 75% indicated preference or strong preference. The image below shows the responses for the same students to this question: If I had a choice to take one of two classes for the same course, where one class included experiential learning activities, and the other class did not include any experiential learning activities, I would select the course that DID include experiential learning. For this question also, 75% of students indicated preference or strong preference for experiential learning. There is much more to analyze, and the process continues. This past week, I concluded the third in series of interviews of instructors and students at a science and technology university in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. This is a pilot study that will help me develop my Ph.D. dissertation research. One of my most significant learning points this week is that my Vietnamese instructor and student interviewees do not understand the concept of experiential learning, at least not initially. The term used for educational methods that go beyond lectures and that involve the students in their own learning processes at this university is active learning. What might be the opposite of active or experiential learning? Educational literature generally defines this opposite method as passive learning, or sometimes traditional learning. Think lectures. Here is one definition of passive learning, "We define a passive mode of engagement as learners being oriented toward and receiving information from the instructional materials without overtly doing anything else related to learning" (Chi & Wylie, 2014, p. 221). Here is a definition of active learning from another group of authors, "Active learning engages students in the process of learning through activities and/or discussion in class, as opposed to passively listening to an expert. It emphasizes higher-order thinking and often involves group work" (Freeman et al., 2014, pp. 8413-8414). In their analysis of research into the performance of students exposed to active versus passive learning, Freeman et al. (2014) found benefits for active learning. Changes in failure rate. (A) Data plotted as percent change in failure rate in the same course, under active learning versus lecturing. The mean change (12%) is indicated by the dashed vertical line. (B) Kernel density plots of failure rates under active learning and under lecturing. The mean failure rates under each classroom type (21.8% and 33.8%) are shown by dashed vertical lines (Freeman et al., 2014, Fig. 1, p. 8411).
For my ongoing research, I will take care to use the term active learning when talking to instructors and students in Vietnam. I will be careful to determine what instructors call experiential or active learning in other countries to be certain that my interview and survey responses are valid. References Chi, M. T., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219-243. Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415. 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. |
Paul mcafeeThis blog summarizes research about active and experiential learning that I have read, and research that I have conducted. Archives
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