Experiential Learning

Brief Overview

The following entry provides a brief description of experiential education, a review of the defining characteristics of this form of pedagogy, the history of experiential education’s origins and evolution, an explanation of its growing popularity and a presentation of the typical experiential learning process.

At the beginning of many experiential learning processes, individual learners are often asked to imagine the life and career they would like to have 5–10 years from the present; they are then asked to identify the new knowledge, skills and competencies they will have to acquire and master to reach their near-term life/career goal. With the assistance of a skilled [Page 326]experiential educator, they create a learning plan for a specific period of time (6–12 months) that identifies two or three critical learning objectives focused on the acquisition of new knowledge, skills and competencies essential to making significant progress towards achieving their near-term life/career goal.

For each of these objectives, learners formulate a series of increasingly challenging field-based learning activities to pursue at work, at school and in the community to enable them to make progress towards achieving these milestones. In designing their plans, learners are often encouraged to construct a capstonelike project as a culminating activity for each of their objectives, which will challenge them to integrate all they have learned relative to a single learning objective, thereby demonstrating their mastery of this topic and/or skill. In addition to a clearly stated near-term life or career goal, specific learning objectives and a robust list of field-based learning activities culminating in a capstone project, learning plans provide the documentation individuals will generate to share their work with others, clear criteria for determining whether or not they have achieved their learning objectives, a list of skilled practitioners who, along with the learner, will help them evaluate their progress and a timeline for completing the plan.

Key Characteristics of Experiential Learning

A number of factors distinguish experiential learning from simple ‘learning by doing’. Among these are the following.