“From the perspective of our brain, learning and doing are just two different verbs that refer to the same mental process.”
Two items captured my attention in the recent University News. Principal Goldbloom reported a 90% increase in funds available for experiential learning and launched a Task Force to identify means to better prepare students for “success beyond the arches.” I hope the Task Force concludes that University investment in experiential learning represents the most powerful, effective and credible means available.
“You can’t solve a problem with the thinking that created it.”
- Albert Einstein
Convincing evidence demonstrates experiential learning works. We learn by doing, and I encourage students to agitate for more of these powerful learning opportunities in more of your courses. While you’re at it, remind yourselves that the familiar two lectures/week teaching schedule did not evolve as a profound response to how students learn, but as a means to administer curricula built with three credit bricks.
Perhaps that is why Arthur E. Levine, past president of Teachers College, Columbia University argues we need an educational system that “focuses on what students learn, rather than on what they are taught and sets standards for what they must learn, rather than prescribing the time allowed to learn those things.” This will require “a new system with teachers as diagnosticians and coaches.” My teaching experience– and the best course I ever took– convince me that Levine is profoundly correct.
Nobel laureate, George Wald, taught that course. He designed Nat. Sci. 5 to meet Harvard’s pre-med Biology requirements for students with or without high school math or science experience. It became rather famous in science education circles.
When my new lab partner and I were assigned work space, we examined the electrical equipment and the marine creature in an ice-filled tub some thoughtful person had placed there. I had taken all the science and math courses offered by Quebec schools — except Biology– so I looked for the lab manual that would explain all. I found a 3 x 5 card on which was written: “Design an experiment to determine whether the Horseshoe Crab perceives color.” Uh, oh. I pointed to the creature and said “I guess that’s the crab.” My partner asked, “Why does it say ‘perceive’ instead of ‘see’? ” No question who had the brains.
There was no textbook to help us out. Wald’s lecture that week, “The Origin of Death,” dealt neither with horseshoe crabs, the physics of light nor the biochemistry of perception. The lab monitor wouldn’t answer our questions directly; “Why do you need to know that?” she’d ask. Or she’d suggest we might want to visit the reading room down the hall. Look stuff up. Faced with more or less total uncertainty, my lab partner and I had to determine how to begin.
Nat Sci. 5 required us to observe, inquire and innovate–activity that called on all our intellectual skills. We learned Biology as a consequence of using those skills to decide what we should do…and then doing it, driven by our own inquisitiveness and interest. Similar lab experiences confirmed that most answers aren’t found in the back of a book, and that good answers must be built from good information. Mistakes are inevitable. Judgment is required.
Wald did not teach in 50 minute increments twice a week; he designed a series of experiences that encouraged us to learn the science. Without saying so much as a word on the subject, he contrived to ensure we learned how to learn. I got a B+
‘The experiential learning opportunities Principal Goldbloom describes – those that take place in the real world – provide a more powerful learning
experience.’
That wonderful course calls another to mind—a compulsory organic chemistry course as irredeemably dreadful as Nat.Sci.5 was rewarding. A roommate generously lent me his “flash cards” summarizing the chemistry I would have to commit to memory. I recall the final exam. As I waited for the signal to begin I balanced my head carefully—fearful that factoids and formulae I’d managed to retain might jostle loose before I set pen to paper. My timing was pretty good; when the final bell sounded my exam book was full and my mind was empty. I got a B+
Same grade, profoundly different outcomes. Nat. Sci. 5 convinced me that learning by doing can—and should– take place in the classroom. My own teaching experience demonstrated, moreover, that the experiential learning opportunities Principal Goldbloom describes—those that take place in, and present the challenges of the real world — provide a yet more powerful learning experience. They also challenge teachers who wish to create them.
An impediment may well be the perceived untidiness of a process that challenges the useful convenience of two hours/week in lectured lockstep— augmented by dark mutterings about absence of academic rigor from folk perfectly unfamiliar with experiential learning. Further challenge resides in the work required to identify suitable learning opportunities, term after term, and to manage a process that engages students with persons and agencies beyond the direct control of the university. That, at least, was what I gleaned from Canadian and American colleagues when we discussed best practices at university based entrepreneurship centers. I wanted to ground Bishop’s new entrepreneurship program on experiential learning, and I wanted to know how others had gone about it.
Others hadn’t. While virtually everyone I spoke to acknowledged the value of experiential learning, no one teaching entrepreneurship to Canadian undergraduates had overcome institutional barriers to integrate these opportunities in the design of their courses or programs. Best practices in experiential learning, it turned out, were to be found in several very highly regarded graduate programs in the States and at Babson at the undergraduate level. Take away this thought: at Bishop’s, we were able to build our new program on the sturdy foundation of experiential learning.
I’d love to take the credit, but much of what is possible here is a consequence of our size. Smaller is better if you want to provide experiential learning for undergraduates. No one I spoke to had even tried to provide meaningful real world challenges for classes in the hundreds. Those with more manageable numbers lacked the institutional support required to provide appropriate opportunities, term after term. We are able to serve our entrepreneurial students because we know them all, our numbers are manageable and because we get help. The Entrepreneurship Centre is a key source of the learning opportunities we provide and the Centre exists because of the visionary generosity of John Dobson and other private donors.
‘We learn by doing, and I encourage students to agitate for more of these powerful learning
opportunities in more of your courses.’
Should you demand experiential learning? Consider this. When I graduated from university, our Commencement speaker saw fit to record that “knowledge doubles every decade.” That’s fast, we all thought back in 1964. By 2004, knowledge doubled every 18 months and, according to IBM, by June, 2009, knowledge has been doubling every 11 hours. If Big Blue is correct, information available to me and thee will increase by a factor of sixteen between your Monday and Wednesday lectures.
The explosion of knowledge and unparalleled capacity to distribute information suggest this: your key to an engaged life will be your capacity to continue to learn and the will to do so–sans professor, classroom or reading list. You will learn by doing, in fact. Or not. Bishop’s appears to be marshalling resources to ensure you learn to face those challenges before you graduate. I can think of no better preparation for life on the far side of the arches.
David Rittenhouse is the founding chairman of the Bishop’s University Drama Department, and the founding director of the Dobson-Lagasse Entrepreneurship Centre.
Great post. You explain things in a very natural clear way. I like it!