What is experience?

Experience refers to the nature of the events someone or something has undergone.  Experience is what is happening to us all the time – as we long we exist.

Experiential Education

 

What is experiential learning?

Experiential learning has come to mean two different types of learning:
1. learning by yourself and
2. experiential education
[experiential learning through programs structured by others]

1. Experiential learning by yourself

Learning from experience by yourself might be called “nature’s way of learning”.  It is “education that occurs as a direct participation in the events of life”.  It includes learning that comes about through reflection on everyday experiences.  Experiential learning by yourself is also known as  “informal education” and includes learning that is organised by learners themselves. 

2. Experiential education
(Experiential learning through programs & activities structured by others)

Principles of experiential learning are used to  design experiential education programs.  Emphasis is placed on the nature of participants’ subjective experiences. 

An experiential educator’s role is to organize and facilitate direct experiences of phenomenon under the assumption that this will lead to genuine (meaningful and long-lasting) learning.  This often also requires preparatory and reflective exercises.

Experiential education is often contrasted with didactic education, in which the teacher’s role is to “give” information/knowledge to student and to prescribe study/learning exercises which have “information/knowledge transmission” as the main goal.

Students are actively involved:

In experiential education, the student becomes more actively involved in the learning process than than in traditional, didactic education.  For example, going to a zoo and learning through observation and interaction with the zoo environment is experiential and in contrast to reading and talking about animals in a classroom.  The main difference here, from a pedagogical point of view, is that the educator who takes his/her students to the zoo rather than stay in the classroom probably values direct experience more highly than abstract knowledge.

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains. 
The superior teacher demonstrates. 
The great teacher inspires.
- William A. Ward

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