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Experiential Education 101

Can anyone design a motivating hands-on experience in one hour or less? Yes.

Learning Outcomes

By the time you reach the bottom of this page, you will be able to:

  • Apply learning models and techniques used in .

  • Build on those models and techniques using your own life experiences.

  • Kick ass and take names.

Choose a Practice Topic

This lesson itself is designed as an experience. As you scroll down, you will be prompted to complete the same sequence of steps an experienced educator may use.

You will need a topic to practice with, something that is:

Here is the scenario we chose as an example: We are facilitating a board training for a small business that recently transitioned to a worker co-op model. Our clients are seven workers who, for the first time, are now serving as a board of directors. They need to learn about their new responsibilities and best practices for board meetings.

What are Learning Outcomes?

It is hard to apply experiential learning techniques if you have not specifically defined what you hope the participants will get from the experience. The third learning outcome we listed above, for example, isn't particularly helpful. But the first two outcomes are written in a way that gives us clear guardrails for what is inside and outside the scope of this lesson plan.

Here are a few tips for writing learning outcomes:

  • Use verbs to start each learning outcome. Carefully choose a verb that feels appropriate for the degree of learning you can achieve given the resources and time you have available.

  • Refer back to a learning pyramid for ensuring your outcomes are realistic. Remember that learning pyramids are prompts for outcome writing, and not a hard science or dogma.

  • Apply the SMART acronym once you have your learning outcomes drafted. Are your outcomes specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-appropriate?

What is Scaffolding?

Scaffolding refers to the supports provided as a learner progresses from simpler to more challenging tasks or experiences. The range of experiences a learner is ready for is sometimes referred to as the zone of proximal development.

A useful technique experiential educators use is presenting a group with a challenging scenario twice. The first time, the group is given lots of support. The facilitator may even work alongside the group. The second time, the scaffolding is removed and the group is challenged to work on its own.

What is Kolb's Cycle?

David A. Kolb published this learning theory in 1984. This idea is best explained visually.

When you watch children at play, you see them naturally work through this cycle. They find themselves in a situation, they experiment, they find something that works, and they explain it to their friends. Notice that the diagram has no end. It is a cycle that hints at ever-present opportunities for growth.

The critical step that is often skipped over in conventional learning environments is the debrief. Instructors often run out of time towards the end of a session and skip the debrief altogether. When you find yourself in that situation, fall back on this simple structure for a well-rounded debrief:

  1. What happened?

  2. So what?

  3. Now what?

What are Modalities?

Learning styles or "modalities" are a hotly-debated topic. For the context of this guide, we simply view learning styles as a lens that can be useful in some situations. Like any lens, it represents only one perspective on a problem.

We simply encourage you to take a step back from time to time and consider which modality best fits each of your learning outcomes. Are you presenting information that benefits from a visual diagram? Is knowledge best experienced outdoors in nature? Are their relevant metaphors in a popular song or poem? When someone learns this skill, what tools or objects will they physically touch to perform that skill?

What is an Adventure Wave?

An adventure wave seems to be a universal, cross-cultural phenomenon that enhances learning, teambuilding and storytelling. Various adventure waves have been proposed by educational practitioners and researchers. They share a few common elements as shown below:

The curve rises and falls as team effectiveness rises and falls. There is natural discord within most groups after the polite, get-to-know you stage. And there is natural cohesiveness in any group after they go through "norming" and their different perspectives are better understood.

The wave continues on through this briefing, activity, and debriefing cycle. The dip in effectiveness before the debriefing serves to underscore the importance of reflection - not everyone in the group will have the same perspective on why they were or were not successful. But the debriefing gives time to pool perspectives and wisdom. After each cycle most groups achieve a higher level of effectiveness or cohesiveness.

What is Flow?

In the field of positive psychology, the "flow state" is another term for being "in the zone." Learners self-report that this state is extremely helpful for learning. There's a great deal of debate on exactly how this works. For our context, it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is applying some common sense to your learning plans. Ask yourself, "Will this experience genuinely challenge your target audience? Will they be bored? Will they be stressed out?"

Let's Put It All Together

Now for the fun part! This is what we've been building towards - the final challenge or "peak" of our own adventure wave.

We are simply going to layer all those diagrams on top of each other:

Drawing

Neat, huh? This diagram is the best tool we can offer experiential educators. We encourage you to save, download, or copy this diagram in your own way. Use it whenever you need to create a learning plan in a hurry or when you need to onboard a new instructor.

Drawing

Let's Debrief

We challenge you to pick one of your next educational projects, set a 60 minute timer, consider each layer of the diagram above, and see what you come up with! It may take less time to plan a learning activity than to write and create visuals for a conventional presentation.

Let's practice our new debriefing skills:

  • What happened? Describe what you just read and experienced in your own words.

  • So what? Was this helpful for you? If so, in what way? Did your assumptions about experiential design match up with what was presented here? Why or why not?

  • Now what? Are you prepared to use these learning theories? Or do you need to find more information and/or perspectives first? Next, we encourage you to read our primer on Critical Pedagogy 101.

Repeat

Experiential design is a valuable skill that requires practice! Full disclosure: The authors of this webpage regularly use it for creating their own lesson plans! It puts us at ease. Next time you need to create a lesson plan, work through the exercises above in whichever order works best for you.

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