POE 2003 Conference

The Perspective: Experiential Learning

Panel Organizer:
Thomas Flint, Vice President for Lifelong Learning, Council for Adult and Experiential Learning

Panelists:
Sandy Bell, Assistant Professor, Adult Learning Program, University of Connecticut

Deborah Dahlen-Zelechowski, Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Robert Morris College

Knowledge Broker:
Elizabeth Cromley, Professor, Architecture Department, College of Arts and Sciences, Northeastern University

Major Issues/ Points Raised

Sandy Bell began by asking the audience to list a few adjectives that described successful and unsuccessful learners. She then described the qualities that proficient learners have: they can access both tacit and explicit knowledge, they have integrated knowledge structures, and they make accurate assessments of problems. She identified a category known as “experiential literacy” ­ that is, the ability to both learn the maximum from experience and to align new learning with previous learning at a structural rather than a literal level.

Sandy provided an example of “capturing the essence of concrete experience.” She related a story of an organic farmer who let the chickens into the greenhouse by mistake. The farmer observed that the chickens were gobbling up all kinds of bugs. Lo and behold, this led him to allow the chickens into the greenhouse on purpose as agents of pest control. The farmer was depicted as being proficient at learning from experience and connecting new with previous knowledge.

Sandy also pointed out that learning is associated with changes in the body, particularly in the neurotransmitters and in the hippocampus. A visceral reaction occurs during the learning process, and as a result, values and feelings become associated with items learned. An emotional response becomes associated with information and reinforces the link between information and experience.

Sandy asserted that in experiential learning, “Doing precedes understanding.” Unpredictable factors encourage and require learning, and learners cannot identify these factors until they attempt to do and understand something. Most learning from experience is tacit—and some of it will be incorrect. It is therefore important to “surface” tacit learning to check its accuracy, to reflect on it, and to make sure it should be incorporated into your knowledge bank. Reflection is essential to being a self-regulated learner, and at its best, reflection can help the learner make analogies between current situations and prior experience at the structural level. Reflection is the way to link present experience with prior structures.

Most people engage in abstract conceptualization, referred to as “mental models” of how the world works. Such mental models are firm and persistent, but can change by means of activation events. Thus, experience is the first step to revising mental models. Successful learning happens in settings where actions require the application of previous learning. People have difficulty learning when experiences and/or environments are too distant or removed from a person’s mental models. A high-risk or threatening environment may help a person who is more advanced to learn, while learning in a safer place is often better for beginners.

Experiential learning also occurs through active experimentation, such as having students solve problems that are both genuine and ill-defined. When we are designing learning situations, we should deliberately activate our mental models and try to map new learning onto them. Most importantly, we need to be intentional. When students engage in experiences, we should have clear intentions for their learning, we should design transforming experiences, and then we should design reflection activities.

The second presenter, Deb Zelachowski, is from Robert Morris College, a college designed for first-generation college students. Many are adults, most of whom are working and have family responsibilities. Thus, the college has designed a curriculum heavily invested in experiences as tools for learning. They have formed community partnerships with area businesses and cultural institutions. These partnerships allow students to gain access to a range of resources, from cultural experiences, such as a ticket to a play, to short- or long-term internships to paid jobs. In return, the partners make use of the students’ skills to further their own projects. Their students “live the liberal arts.”

Robert Morris has learned that it must teach teachers how to incorporate the students’ experiences into their classrooms. Teachers attend workshops to learn how to integrate these community relationships into general education courses, and how to reflect on the experiential learning their students gain. The community becomes the lab, and teachers weave these experiences into their courses. Every course in the college has at least one cultural connection or partnership.

The third presenter, Tom Flint, discussed how colleges assess adult students’ life experiences as learning. Older students coming back to college want their life-learning to count for college credit where suitable. Current assessment practices can distinguish college-level learning from other kinds. He also reported that students whose life experiences have been carefully assessed for college credit tend to stay in college and have higher graduation rates.

Further Discussion and Reflection:

• How is the work environment distinctive in its potential as a learning venue?
Sandy Bell’s principles of learning did not make a distinction between work settings and other experiences in activating learning. At Robert Morris College, the work setting and the classroom setting were entwined, each complementing the other in content for the learners. The assessment of learning from life experiences values learning at work, but does not specify how work-related learning is distinctive from learning in general, and, in fact, attempts to apply the standard of “college-level” learning to what has been learned in the workplace.

• What is it about work that induces learning in the first place?
Learning is most likely to occur in situations that are just unfamiliar enough to require new responses in learners. However, when the situations are too strange, learners may not be able to connect new information to their existing mental models. Learners who have the ability to make deep connections at a structural level between a familiar situation and a novel one are the best able to learn in any setting.

• What are the roles of theory and reflection in learning from work?
Sandy Bell pointed out that no one learns sufficiently without reflecting upon experiences—be it in the classroom or in the outside world. Reflection is the stage when deep connections can be made between new and prior knowledge.

• Return to Reports from the Panel Sessions