5 Myths About Learning in College: Myth 3
A “studio-style” classroom I created to support learning with things in classes from across the disciplines.
This is the third from the list of myths I tell my students about on the first day of class. I believe that if they understand that my unusual pedagogy has a grounding in fact they will be more accepting of it.
Myth 3: “Experiential Learning” requires going off campus—to study abroad, do service learning, or do a co-op placement.
In higher education, there is a lot of talk about experiential learning as a supplement to conventional, classroom based education. In these discussions, experiential learning invariably means field trips, internships, study abroad, service learning with a local organization—activities that involve leaving the campus.
What this misses is the essential fact that all learning is experiential. The brilliant philosopher, educator, and public intellectual John Dewey put experience at the core of his work on education. Students are constantly having experiences, in the classroom as well as outside, and these are the basis for all learning.
In a poignant paragraph, Dewey wrote: It is a great mistake to suppose…that the traditional schoolroom was not a place in which pupils had experiences…. [Instead,] the experiences which were had, by pupils and teachers alike, were largely of a wrong kind. How many students, for example, were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them? How many acquired special skills by means of automatic drill so that their power of judgment and capacity to act intelligently in new situations was limited? How many came to associate the learning process with ennui and boredom? [Dewey, 1938. Experience and education.]
Off-campus learning can have tremendous educational value, but we should not make the mistake of thinking that “experiential education” is not also happening in our classrooms. Every minute of every class, students are having experiences, and we are squandering a critical resource if we don’t recognize this and work to shape the classroom experience so that students are rendered sensitive rather than callous, and expand their power of judgment and capacity to act intelligently in new situations. It is a myth to think that only off-campus learning is experiential.
To counter this myth, I offer the following proposition: