Confucius, an influential philosopher in 450 BC, once said “Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand” (Sims, 2002). To achieve deep learning, students need exposure to new behaviours, skills, and settings. In contrast to the traditional classroom and lecture-based teaching styles, experiential learning requires participants to actively engage with the content in a meaningful way. They are encouraged to witness the consequences of these experiences, receive feedback, reflect upon them, and integrate these new observations into how they usually think and behave. In its simplest form, experiential learning is learning by doing.
The traditional lecture-based style of learning is most familiar to us as we’ve been nurtured in this form of education for the majority of our lives. With objective measures of achievement, structured curriculums, and convenient implementation, it has succeeded in maintaining its strong prevalence in schools worldwide. Though standard pedagogy learning models can be useful, there are limitations to this medium of teaching. There are many cases where students tune out, disengage with the content, and have no incentive to actively participate. Research comparing lectures and engagement suggest that the student’s attention span declines after twenty minutes (Bligh, 2000). Another study demonstrates that undergraduate students in passive lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that utilize more active teaching methods (Freeman et al., 2014) (Figure 1). This is problematic as the attention span of students will only continue to decrease in the digital age. Most TED talks last up to 20 minutes at maximum, but most institutions still follow the 50 minute long lecture format or longer (TED, 2018).
Moreover, lectures have focused primarily on conveying information instead of the exploration, clarification, or discussion of content being learned. As we are living in the 21st century, the Information Age, students should not be studying for answers that are only a Google search away. The future of lectures will need to change from information transmission to knowledge management (Bates, 2015). It has become less relevant for instructors to test knowledge-based questions and more appropriate for them to help students build their evaluation, application, searching, and analysis skills. This is where experiential learning is utilized in a powerful way. Project-based learning and collaborative learning has become more valuable. As well, instructors can appreciate more direct, individual and group learner support, bringing them into closer contact with students.
The standard teaching models that were sufficient a decade ago may no longer be appropriate for today’s educational practices. In an era with the persistence of lecture-based classes, limited attention span, and passive learning, experiential learning is needed now more than ever.
References
Bates, A.W., 2015. Teaching in a digital age. [online] Victoria: BCcampus, BC Open Textbook Project. Available at: <http://open.bccampus.ca/find-open-textbooks/?uuid=da50f5f1-bbc6-481e-a359-e73007c66932&contributor=&keyword=&subject=> [Accessed 16 Mar. 2019].
Bligh, D., 2000. What’s the Use of Lectures? Intellect Books.
Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith, M.K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H. and Wenderoth, M.P., 2014. Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), pp.8410–8415.
Sims, R., 2002. Teaching Business Ethics for Effective Learning. Greenwood Publishing Group.
TED, 2018. TEDx Rules. [online] TEDx Rules. Available at: <https://www.ted.com/participate/organize-a-local-tedx-event/before-you-start/tedx-rules> [Accessed 16 Mar. 2019].