Evaluating Experiential Learning Activities

Abstract

While it’s thought that experiential learning pedagogies encourage greater student engagement that results in deep meaningful learning, it may be that they sometimes yield short-term surface learning. This notion that experiential learning activities in and of themselves do not always produce. Meaningful learning is explored by examining the learning processes evoked by the activity. Evidence is presented that suggests those students who completed the four stages of the experiential learning cycle utilized a deeper approach to learning and perceived they learned more, in contrast to abbreviated learning cycles that produced a surface approach to learning. Examining the mediating effect of students’ approaches to learning may explain the varied nature of experiential learning activities even though the short-term learning outcomes seem to have been achieved. Implications for the classroom as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning are provided.