One of the services offered through the Youth Development Specialist and Safe
and Drug Free Schools is experiential learning opportunities. Any class,
group, team, club, or faculty and staff group can take advantage of
these teambuilding opportunities on the challenge course or on campus. If you
are interested in taking advantage of experiential learning opportunities,
please feel free to contact me. See below for a further explanation of
experiential education and why it is effective.
What is Experiential Education?
* Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, soulfully, and or
physically. This involvement produces a perception that the learning task is
authentic.
* Experiences are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make
decisions, and be accountable for the results.
* Throughout the learning process, the learner is actively engaged in posing
questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems,
assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.
* The results of learning are personal and form the basis for future
experience and learning.
* Relationships are developed and nurtured: Learner to self, learner to
others, and learner to the world at large.
* The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk
taking, and uncertainty, since the outcomes of experience cannot be totally
predicted.
* The educator’s primary roles include selecting suitable experiences, posing
problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, ensuring physical and
emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.
* The educator recognizes and encourages spontaneous opportunities for
learning.
* Educators strive to be aware of biases, judgments, and preconceptions and
how they influence the learner.
* The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn
from natural consequences, mistakes, and success.
Reasons why experiential learning is effective
* Equality
* Developing relationships quickly
* Disequilibrium
* Projective technique
* Decreased time cycle
* Meta learning
* Chaos and crisis in a safe environment
* Kinaesthetic imprint
* Common language / common mythology
* Encourage risk taking
* Diversity of strengths
* Fun
