Experiential Learning in the Humanities--What's the Buzz?

[larryc]

So friends, the flavor of the moment on my campus is experiential learning. The administration wants more of it, a lot more, and there might even be funding. Now they seem to think that experiential learning means STEM, but as a public historian I know better. My department (History, Anthro and Languages) has always had some good experiential learning opportunities, but we want to offer sexy new possibilities to the admin.

Two questions:

1. Is there a generally agreed upon definition of experiential learning? When we talk about it on my campus it can be like the four blind men trying to describe and elephant.

2. What sexy, sexy ideas do you have for experiential learning in the humanities? It can be an activity, a course, or a whole damn program.

Thanks!

[fleabite]

This is not exactly an answer to your questions, but I find Google Scholar very useful for this sort of query. The search term "experiential learning" +humanities (structured just like that), provides many interesting hits (with activities). You could also try +theory and +definition.

[Kron3007]

I think field courses are probably the apex of this. I feel thus would fit well with a lot of fields within the humanities.

I run an international field course in STEM, and I frequently get feedback from students saying it was the highlight of their degree, life changing, etc.  I enjoy teaching the course, and feel it definitely has a lot of value for students.

[Ruralguy]

The commonalities I often hear repeated are:

-common experience(s) beyond a standard lecture (a lab course can fit the bill, but would probably need to be adjusted)

-reflective component (i.e., student reflect on (and write on or talk about) their experience.

The courses at my college that get highest marks on this are the ones that have an interesting field component or common creative component.

I'm sure there's more...

[Hegemony]

Administrators especially like the ones that have a component that's internship-like and, as the jargon goes, "career-legible." Fieldwork is one possibility, but also anything that's not just reading or viewing or writing. For instance, in my course about games, we play the games. In my course about food, we make the food. Etc.

[sinenomine]

Seconding Ruralguy and Hegemony. My school links experiential learning with high impact practices. It covers a wide swath, including field trips, service learning, and internships as well as in-class activities such as shared knowledge creation, hands-on activities, active research, and the like. I've seen it have clear impacts on boosting student engagement and retention. Like larryc, I'm in the humanities.

[Mobius]

My place is trying to emphasize service learning (volunteering in conjunction with a course) and education abroad. We have internships, but most students won't do them if they aren't required.

We have some monetary incentives for faculty to integrate service learning and active research into our classes.

[the_geneticist]

The commonalities I often hear repeated are:

-common experience(s) beyond a standard lecture (a lab course can fit the bill, but would probably need to be adjusted)

-reflective component (i.e., student reflect on (and write on or talk about) their experience.

The courses at my college that get highest marks on this are the ones that have an interesting field component or common creative component.

I'm sure there's more...

A shared creation by the students also works.  Write & perform a play; investigate the history of the school mascot/statue/etc; learn about how to use archives/herbaria and add to or help inventory the collection.

Check out Zooniverse.org for other community science type projects.  It started as mostly Biology, but now has a lot of projects in History, Language, Arts and more