Experiential Learning
At QVHS, students engage in highly personalized experiences to develop their interests, strengths, and skills in order to understand how they fit within the broader context of learning, work, and life. Students can choose to engage in Self-Directed Learning, Work-Based Learning, or Industry-Based Learning to satisfy this graduation requirement.
What is Experiential Learning?
Experiential learning is a process through which students develop knowledge, skills, and values from direct experiences outside a traditional academic setting.
Learning that is considered "experiential" contain all the following elements:
- A designed learning experience that includes the possibility to learn from natural consequences, mistakes, and successes
- Opportunities for students to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results
- Opportunities for students to engage intellectually, creatively, emotionally, socially, or physically
- Reflection, critical analysis and synthesis
From the Experiential Learning Center, University of Colorado at Denver
The Experiential Learning Cycle
Benefits of Experiential Learning
Increasingly employers seek young people with more than just academic skills. They actively recruit people who can collaborate and communicate, who can persevere and problem-solve. Classroom exercises have a prominent place in education but learning experiences in self-selected areas of strength or interest yield life lessons that make our students more versatile, valuable and successful adults.
A recent survey in Forbes magazine of over 100 HR managers, recruiters and CEOs discussed the most desirable attributes they look for in new hires. Descriptors included attention, focus, curiosity, willingness to learn, agility, perseverance, humility and not just “capability” but “copability” – defined as the ability to function under pressure or to recover from setbacks.
Having our students select or design their own experience to set a goal and accomplish something of personal importance is one way to help them develop, practice, and articulate essential skills that are transferable to other settings.
Steps in Experiential Learning
“Do something!”
Students will engage in a hands-on experience with guidance, but not direction from, peers, teachers, and mentors.
“What happened?”
Students will share the results, reactions and observations with their peers, reflecting on what they discovered.
“What was important?”
Students will discuss and analyze the experience and examine how themes, problems and issues emerged and were addressed.
“So what?”
Students will connect the experience with other real world examples, find trends or common truths in the experience, and identify “real life” skills that were developed. The students generalize this experience to others they have had or may someday face.
“Now what?”
Students will transfer and apply what they learned in the experience to new experiences.
Choosing an experience...
- Self-Directed Learning (SDL) is designed for students who are interested in creating their own experiences or building off of a club/activity that they are already involved in.
- Work-Based Learning (WBL) is designed for students who are interested in service work or an internship with an organization or business. OR, for students interested in learning more about a career area through job shadows or career mentoring.
- Industry-Based Learning (IBL) is designed for students who are interested in learning about an industry through a pre-apprenticeship or earning an industry-recognized credential.
Experiential learning...
- Increases student engagement
- Encourages a growth-oriented mindset
- Bridges the gap between school learning and real-world learning
- Increases student confidence
- Increases student efficacy
- Enhances retention of new learning
- Personalizes learning
- Increases self-awareness of individual interests and strengths