Experiential Education & Field-Based Teaching and Learning:
Principles and Practices
Jay Roberts, Ph.D.
Earlham College

Day 1 Workshop Overview

Putting Experiential Learning in Context

Defining Experiential Education

Methodologies of Experiential Education

Design and Experiential Education

Day 2 Workshop Overview

Facilitating Experiential Education

Assessment and Evaluation of Experiential Education

Final Reflections

Introductions

Mihi Mihi

More about you

More about me

More about us

Pairs: what would you like to learn, do, and come away with?

Paradigms...

Instruction vs Learning

Learning communities

Collaborative assignments and projects

Service learning, community based learning

Undergraduate research

Internships and project-based learning

Diversity/global learning

Immersion experiences

1. A professor who excited me about learning

2. Professors who cared about me as a person

3. A mentor who helped me pursue my goals and dreams

4. Work on a project that took a semester or more to complete

5. Internship or job that allowed me to apply my learning

6. Extremely active in extracurricular activities and organizations

3% agreed to all 6.

Stanford’s Sebastian Thrun made headlines in the fall of 2011 when his on-line Artificial Intelligence course enrolled over 160,000 students. According to the New York Times (“Harvard and MIT Team Up To Offer On-Line Classes,” May 2, 2012)

‘Place-based colleges’ are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet, said the Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a conference on Friday.

Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university,” he argued at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif. “College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based.”

from: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/bill-gates-predicts-technology-will-make-place-based-colleges-less-important-in-5-years/26092

Facebook Story: if someone from the 1950's suddenly appeared, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?

I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to humankind.

And I use it to look at funny videos of cats

Social

Experiential

Multi-modal

Emotion

Pattern

Relevance

Reflection

STANFORD STUDY

"The study involved 28 undergraduate and graduate students as participants, none of whom had studied neuroscience. After being given an initial test, half of the group read about the neuroscience of vision, while the others worked with BrainExplorer. When tested after those respective lessons, the performance of participants who used BrainExplorer increased significantly more – 30 percent – than those who had read the text.

Next the researchers had each of the two groups do the other learning activity: Those who had used BrainExplorer read the text, while those who had read the text used BrainExplorer. All the participants then took another test, and the findings revealed a 25-percent increase in performance when open-ended exploration came before text study rather than after it. (A follow-up study showed identical results for video classes instead of text.)

“We are showing that exploration, inquiry and problem solving are not just ‘nice to have’ things in classrooms,” said Blikstein. “They are powerful learning mechanisms that increase performance by every measure we have.” Pea explained that these results indicate the value for learning of first engaging one’s prior knowledge and intuitions in investigating problems in a learning domain – before being presented with abstracted knowledge. Having first explored how one believes a system works creates a knowledge-building relevance to the text or video that is then presented, he said."

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/before-reading-or-watching-videos-students-should-first-experiment/

National Academies (2005). "Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research." Four drivers...

Inherent complexity of nature and society

The desire to explore problems and questions that are not confined to a single discipline

The need to solve social problems

The need to produce revolutionary insights and generative technologies

American Academy for the Advancement of Science:

“As biology faculty, we need to put the “depth versus breadth” debate behind us. It is true today, and will be even more so in the future, that faculty cannot pack everything known in the life sciences into one or two survey courses. The advances and breakthroughs in the understanding of living systems cannot be covered in a classroom or a textbook. They cannot even be covered in the curriculum of life sciences majors. A more tenable approach is to recast the focus of biology courses and curricula on the conceptual framework on which the science itself is built and from which discoveries emerge. Such a focus is increasingly interdisciplinary, demands quantitative competency, and requires the instructor to use facts judiciously as a means of illustrating concepts rather than as items to be memorized in isolation.

The time has come for all biology faculty, but particularly those of us who teach undergraduates, to change the way we think about teaching and begin to develop a coordinated and sustainable plan for implementing sound principles of teaching and learning." (2009)

Global Recession

"Neo-Liberal" Academy

Market, ROI, Outcomes, Accountability, Value Proposition

College-to-Career focus

Affordability and Attendance

College Attendance: "In 1960, 392,000 students earned bachelor degrees. By 2007 that number had nearly quadrupled to 1.52 million."(Ferrall, 2011)

"In 2009, spending by Americans for post-secondary education totaled $461 billion, an amount 42% greater than in 2000, after accounting for inflation. This $461 billion is the equivalent of 3.3% of total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and an amount greater than the total GDP of countries such as Sweden, Norway and Portugal."

From: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/02/opinion/vedder-college-costs/index.html

The credit crisis (student loan debt in US exceeds total credit card debt for first time in 2012)

Generation "Z"

"Likes"

Hands-on learning

Real world experience

Professional opportunity

Small class sizes

Personal connections

"In survey after survey, employers seem to agree that the skill they most want in future workers is adaptability. Those who hire complain that they often find today’s college graduates lacking in interpersonal skills, problem solving, effective written and oral communication skills, teamwork, and the ability to think critically and analytically."

From: http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2012/09/12/skills-gap-employers-and-colleges-point-fingers-at-each-other/

UNPREPARED?

With modern technology, if all there is is lectures, we don't need faculty to do it," Redish says. "Get 'em to do it once, put it on the web, and fire the faculty."

from: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/rethinking-teaching.html

Solvable by any one discipline?

"Easily" solvable?

The world is full of complex, unscripted problems where the answers are not immediately known and the consequences matter.

Wicked Problems

Contested and Complex

Dispersed responsibility and power

High potential for unforeseen consequences

Uncertain, unclear data

Time stress

as

"By using the phrase “disrupting ourselves” ... I am asserting that one key source of disruption in higher education is coming not from the outside but from our own practices, from the growing body of experiential modes of learning, moving from margin to center, and proving to be critical and powerful in the overall quality and meaning of the undergraduate experience. As a result, at colleges and universities we are running headlong into our own structures, into the way we do business." (Bass, 2012)

"These pressures are disruptive because to this point we have funded and structured our institutions as if the formal curriculum were the center of learning, whereas we have supported the experiential co-curriculum (and a handful of anomalous courses, such as first-year seminars) largely on the margins, even as they often serve as the poster children for the institutions’ sense of mission, values, and brand. All of us in higher education need to ask ourselves: Can we continue to operate on the assumption that the formal curriculum is the center of the undergraduate experience?" (Bass, 2012)

"We all know or sense that the academy today is in the throes of transformation. The knowledge, skills, and values in which students should be educated; the intellectual landscape of the disciplines and degrees; the ways in which educational institutions are organized; the funding of teaching, learning, and research-- all of this promises to be profoundly different in 20 years. The forces of change have resulted partly from our own inertia, partly from consequences of our success, and partly from broad political, market, and technological developments not of our making. The question is not whether the academy will be changed, but how." (Scobey, 2012)

Final Reflections and Takeaways

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry

Sense of invitation

Make outcomes relevant and overt

Set clear expectations

Gradient

Social Context

Are they ready?

Relationships 101

Full-Value Contracts

Collaboration skills

On-going (not just at end of experience)

Iterative feedback and formative assessment

What? So What? Now What?

Kindling, big logs, and progressions

Multi-modal

Cognitive

Intrapersonal

Interpersonal

Multi-modal Pt 2

Verbal/Oral

Written

Meta-assignments

POL's

Digital Storytelling

Social media!

Gallery walks

Stages

Interventions

Head Toward Trouble

Differentiation

Models

Continue, Start, Stop

Gems and Opportunities

Plus, Delta (Roses and Thorns, Apples and Onions)

Peer/group feedback

Return to First Principles

Be prepared for failure

What are your outcomes?

Fail forward

Grit, adaptation, resilience

Overview

Design and EE

Facilitating Experiential Education

Assessment and Evaluation of Experiential Education

Final Reflections

Paired share progression

Dinner

Something from yesterday

Define EE?

A memorable edu design moment

Experience before Label

"Messy"

John Dewey's "Indeterminate Situation"

Ambiguity, unpredictability, and uncertainty

"Fail Fast" or "Fail Forward" orientation

Risk

Authenticity-- of product/task and audience

JFK LBJ ON TV FBI

Key General Principles

No "one best way"

UbD

Activity Trap

Grading Trap

Trivial Trap

What are the enduring understandings?

Go Big! Go Small!

Design for Significant/High Impact Learning

Chunking and stages

IBFVTNOJBLKFJ

EELDRC

Fink- Integrated Course Design

EELDRC

Can happen at any scale: micro, meso, macro

ENROLL: The importance of framing

EXPERIENCE: Experience Before Label!

LABEL: Punctuated direct instruction

DEMONSTRATE: Practice through content

REVIEW: Multiple opportunities for feedback and reflection

CONNECT: On-ramping with other content, experiences

Pairs: EELDRC how to tie a shoe...

Situational Factors

How many students?

What level? Where does it fit in sequencing of curriculum?

What is special instructional challenge of this course?

Nature of subject?

Theoretical, practical?

Convergent or divergent?

What is expected of the course by the students? the department? the institution?

How does this course fit into larger curricular context?

"Significant Learning" as opposed to "Understand and Remember"

"Assessment is a process by which information is obtained relative to some known objective or goal. Assessment is a broad term that includes testing. A test is a special form of assessment. Tests are assessments made under contrived circumstances especially so that they may be administered. In other words, all tests are assessments, but not all assessments are tests."

http://www.adprima.com/measurement.htm

How do we know what we are doing is working?

"Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course. ... In other words, formative assessments are for learning, while summative assessments are of learning."

www.edglossary.org

"A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery."

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/rubrics.html

What will the students have to do, to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning goals?

Authentic Assessment (Wiggins and McTighe)

Realistically contextualized

Requires judgement and innovation

Asks students to "do" the subject

Replicates challenging "real life" situations

Asks students to integrate across KSA's (not isolate)

Discrete lessons are made meaningful toward mastery

Allows opportunities to rehearse, practice, get feedback, and refine

"A student portfolio is a compilation of academic work and other forms of educational evidence assembled for the purpose of (1) evaluating coursework quality, learning progress, and academic achievement; (2) determining whether students have met learning standards or other academic requirements for courses, grade-level promotion, and graduation; (3) helping students reflect on their academic goals and progress as learners; and (4) creating a lasting archive of academic work products, accomplishments, and other documentation."

http://edglossary.org/portfolio/

Digital Dumping Ground

Skill, competency specific

Development within a course

Project-based (multiple classes)

Reflection-oriented/transfer

Capstone

Backward-Looking Assessment

Constructed to determine whether students "got" the material

Forward-Looking Assessment

Constructed to determine whether students are ready for some future activity, after the current period of learning is over

Experiential

Active Learning

CBL

PBL

Integrative Learning

Are the learning activities consistent with the learning goals?

Are the feedback and assessment strategies consistent with the learning goals and activities?

What is extraneous? What could be amplified?

Scales

Micro

Meso

Macro

Keep it simple!

Just Get Started

One class, one experience

Don't do more; do different

Go bigger!

An entire unit of a class; a semester project

Program level, unit level, institution-wide

BHAG

Think about assessment in the design itself

Fail fast, fail forward

Groups of 3

Curriculum Workshop

Design challenge?

Dream course?

Tweaking an existing course?

Cooperative Jigsaw

Home Groups

Review list of experiential methodologies

Service Learning

Community-Based Learning

Project or Problem-Based Learning

Game-Based Learning

Active Learning

Cooperative Learning

Place-Based Learning

Inquiry-Based Learning

Which have you employed and how?

Which are you less familiar with and/or have questions about?

Expert Groups

Review handout and definition for your methodology

Come up with ideas or examples of this methodology in practice

Discuss pro's and con's of this methodology

Home Groups

Teach your methodology

As a group-- what further questions or points of discussion do you have at this point?

Active Learning

Community-Based Learning

Integrative Learning

Problem-Based Learning

Discussion

Groups of 4

Discussion

Lingering questions?

Take aways?

What would you like to do more of tomorrow?

Looking ahead to tomorrow...

Facilitation and EE

Assessment and Outcomes of EE

Final Discussion and reflection

Is it experiential learning?

Pop Quiz!

A lacrosse coach has students run an offense vs defense scrimmage

A student volunteers at the local food pantry

A chemistry lab

English students role-playing a scene from a novel

A study tour trip to France

A computer-based game/simulation to learn/practice classroom content

A student produced play or drama production

Small group discussions in class

An internship

A student initiated research project

AEE's Principles

Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis and synthesis.

Experiences are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions and be accountable for results.

Throughout the educational process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.

Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, soulfully and/or physically. This involvement produces a perception that the learning task is authentic.

The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking and uncertainty, because the outcomes of experience cannot totally be predicted.

The educator's primary roles include setting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, insuring physical and emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.

The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn from natural consequences, mistakes and successes.

Examples of how you have experienced this (or not?) at CC?

How does this inform our curriculum, our pedagogical designs moving forward?