I believe that experiential learning is vitally important in providing students with skills that will prepare them for the real world. Experiential learning involves learning through doing an action. While we can interpret this idea purely as giving students experience in the course topic(s), I would argue that experiential learning should also consist of using the class to give students experiences to build basic communication skills.
Many undergraduates are 18-21 year olds are constantly engaging with technology and information, just as they do with reading and writing. However, many of them will have had little formal training in how to use technology or the information readily available on the internet, or they may not understand the context of the training. The modern undergraduate does not need to be taught to blog- they need to be taught how to identify technological tools and the critical thinking skills to use these tools. An 18 year old may not believe determining sources’ reliability is important until their told how they could be sued for liable for printing incorrect information in a newspaper or how basing a manufacturing decision on a study from an opinion website may result in being fired.
Part of experiential learning should include teaching students how to navigate through the wilds of the internet, teaching them to recognize when they’re on the well-trodden paths of peer-reviewed science and objective reporting; see biases which are hidden in the fact fronds, and teach them to be aware of the breadcrumbs of personal information that they’re leaving behind every time they click on a search engine link, accept cookies from friendly-looking sites; or post, like, or re-tweet.
Colleges and universities should develop curriculum permeated with assignments intended to develop core life skills, even after the students have forgotten all the definitions required. We should develop courses which where the base assumption is that we are improving students’ abilities even as we’re testing them on chemical bonds and the War of 1812. Instructors should ask the question of their course: do the assignments teach more than just the assigned topic, and can I put my course topic in real-life contexts? Teaching students how to craft a professional email doesn’t require them to have assignments where that action is the requirement. These skills develop when course after course requires writing to be coherent, capitalized, and spelled correctly. The same idea applies to teaching technological navigation. The ability to investigate a website for credibility is a skill that will only develop with use, and the ability to read a credible resource (such as a peer-reviewed article) and be able to identify flaws or gaps through critical thinking and not expert knowledge can only come with experience.
For the course content to be interrupted as experiential learning to the students, they must be told that it is. We should provide context to not only the course and course content, but the course structure and rubric choices. Explaining our objectives and how the skills developed in the course will be relevant to them later in life. Teach the students to see how course work is experiential learning.
For blog’s sake, not another blog 
First of all, you win the award for the best blog title. 🙂
I think you bring up a great point about technology and training. These kids get a pass because they have grown up with technology, so they already understand it all, right? Not so much. I am pretty astounded on a regular basis by how little my students know about technology and how it works across different platforms. Just as a small example, I regularly have students submit “Pages” docs from Apple devices, which do not work with Canvas (or PCs, for that matter). Students are always confused as to why, and they do not seem to understand that we live in a polarized world of technology. Simple technology apptitude should be a skillset that is taught, probably in K-12, before a student enters college. At that point, they need to know how to navigate the different tools.
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Thanks! I have to admit my punny partner came up with it, not me.
Yes, I was shocked when I started working with undergrads (and graduates) that they didn’t know how to navigate to parts of their computer or how taking a picture with their phone isn’t the same as scanning in a pdf. It’s exhausting to constantly correct students, but if we don’t, they’ll never learn (or learn why it’s important to know).
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You both are bringing up some good points about technology in context and having the skills to use technology. I know what you mean, teaching technology skills on the fly when you’re trying to communicate something else can be really frustrating. It is easy to feel frustrated when you are always making corrections. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt that way before. But everyone has to learn “it” from somewhere! And I like the way you are thinking about the issue, Sabrina–the context and reason for why we do things the way we do or use certain technologies, etc… And I agree with you Kathleen that students should be getting introduced to technology well before they enter college–like in middle school (seemed to work out OK for me).
I was reminded recently about how different everyone’s educational background can be and we never really know what kind of experience a person had before they came into our lives. So when students don’t know something, I try not to get frustrated. (Sometimes it’s been a long day already and my patience is running out… I have to remind myself to have empathy!) So in these moments, I like to view it in a positive light and think about how it’s a moment to show them the right way to do it.
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Yes, sometimes it’s a struggle not be be frustrated- especially when no one realizes that you’re not even speaking the same “language.” (Start by opening your course file folder… no the file folder… no,that’s… OK, let’s just start by going to My Documents… This is a file folder.) I try to mitigate the frustration with detailed directions up front, but it’s so labor intensive.
What I find the most frustrating is when you spend time providing feedback that is never incorporated into future work. I realized when writing my initial post that I needed to explain how improving communication skills is part of the objective, and canvas discussions/writing assignments are ways to build skills not just get a grade. I needed to explain that they should focus on improving their writing not because I keep marking them down, but because they will need these skills when applying for jobs, when communicating with bosses or coworkers, etc. True, many students will not care, but some may be more willing to incorporate feedback if they see the reason behind the work.
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Very well articulated Rinaley. I think it is important to point out that ‘technology’ and ‘technological context’ constitute a totality that must be served whole. By teaching technological context, we are making an acknowledgement of the existence, and perhaps, the importance of technology. I wonder how complete such teaching discourse would be with the deliberate exclusion of its very building block. In my view, none of these two should preclude the other, in much the same way that curricular and co-curricular activities (which I presume to be close to experiential learning in your post) must remain the totality that they are. Nonetheless, an important question would be how much of each of these two needs to form part of the teaching discourse. Many Thanks
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Hey Amos,
Interesting this notion of technology & technological context are like curricular & extra-curricular activities; like a symbiosis and I think you’re right on.
You are asking a really good question about how to spend your instruction time too. What do you think about striking this balance? Have you thought about how you might do it? (Same questions to Sabrina & Kathleen. 🙂 )
I am imagining for me it would likely be like having a “project brief” before beginning an assignment. Except “project brief” really is the introduction and that would include a technology checkup before getting started.
So, depending on whatever technologies are needed, how, & in what context… I think I would ask a few questions to gauge the understanding of the class first. Then, depending on level of competency, we’d either do a demo, or I’d share an instructional video, give a short instruction, etc. OR have them do an activity, depending on the need. Best case scenario they’re vaguely familiar and I and give a list of resources and we can move on with the content. Then students can just come to office hours or get help from a neighbor and we don’t have to take up a lot of class time–but I would if I HAD to. 😉
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I agree with you on assessing technological skills before delving in too deep in how to use the technology- or sending them to resources that already exist on the World Wide Web. Teaching students how to search for answers is another important life skill. 🙂
In my idea scenario, all courses within a program/university/college would try to put their work in experiential context. Not necessarily teaching students to use excel or tweet, but by including little nuggets of context to the work or crafting the work so they have incentives to learn… and providing them resources to use to learn the technology if they haven’t already (like classmates or links or office hours).
For instance: “It’s important you use excel (or open office version) for these assignments, because it’s often used in this field for x/y/z.” Or “In this assignment, you’ll be reading a paper and writing a summary for your boss to use when going to a meeting with very important people.”
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Thank you so much for your post. It reminds me of one of the most profoundly influential classes that I took as an undergraduate here at Virginia Tech, it was called something like “Critical Thinking” in the Animal and Poultry Science Dept. and I loved the course, not just because of the fact that I am a born rebel at heart, but because my teacher was as well. He taught us to think critically of every piece of information presented to us. I remember him saying that we should never take anything anyone said to us at face value and that it was up to us to find the credible truth by critically evaluating all the information. I really loved the way that professor was able to make us believe in our own powers as students and as individuals. He had that innate ability to empower and lead all at the same time. Your post reminds me of him and how as teachers we are sometimes tasked with teaching basic life skills.
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Sounds like a great class!
My ideal curriculum structure would involve most courses incorporating those type of critical thinking lessons.
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HI Rinaley, thank you for your post! I agree with you that we should focus on teaching technological context rather than technology. The changes we have experienced in the information age are extremely rapid. Perhaps the popular social media and web tools will be unknown in a decade–think about Yahoo and ICQ. In that case, building basic communication skills through networked learning is more important.
However, Although we know that experimental learning is important, it does not mean that we can actually do it well. In my opinion, networked learning has higher requirements for teachers’ teaching skills. Can all teachers deal with this challenge? From my personal experience, this is still difficult. Considering the age of many professors, you can’t force them to familiarize themselves with and use the networking tools that young people love.
But anyway, the future is bright, the road is tortuous. At least for us, we should work hard for it.
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A valid point- some instructors don’t care to learn technology. But technology is just a vehicle for communication, and those instructors could focus on improving reading/writing/critical thinking skills, which are applicable across platforms. They can just put those lessons into the context of “these will help you whether you want to win a twitter argument or you want to write a professional email to a future employer.”
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Hi. You make an excellent point, writing “Instructors should ask the question of their course: do the assignments teach more than just the assigned topic, and can I put my course topic in real-life contexts?” Vox had a great article several years ago about how we’re teaching economics wrong. As in many things, the applicability of a topic or concept in a real world example is missing from many courses — especially at the undergraduate level, but not restricted to it by any means. The other piece of what you wrote lends itself to the idea of teaching interdisciplinary. Beyond the classroom, this is the real skill that is needed for virtually all teams and projects. Thank you for your blog and I look forward to reading more throughout the semester.
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Thanks! Yes- I feel strongly that classes shouldn’t just be about providing information without context, because many undergraduates (and graduates) will brain dump information they don’t see as important and do the minimum work if they see the assignments as busy work.
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Hi, I spent a bit of time thinking about the idea of teaching students to understand technology after the readings this week and I can’t say that I took it the same way you did. I feel like we have been discussing identifying reliable sources, etc extensively in higher learning for as long as I’ve been in it. I suppose I thought they were referring more to letting students know what a url really is or how connections between websites and platforms exist.
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Hi, I think that is what a lot of the readings were about- I just disagree with them. I think more focus should be on communication skills, regardless of platform. Instructors could expose students to what those platforms do, but many students are far more savvy on what the latest platforms are than the instructors.
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Okay, cool. Thanks for clarifying!
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