Workshop assists teachers with integrating experiential learning

A new workshop at Boise State University was held recently to improve teachers' understanding of ways to integrate experiential learning into the classroom.

Often, students are expected to take home course content and apply it to life experiences, but there seems to be a distinct disconnect between the education and the application.

To help reduce the difficulty in using "book learning" in the "real world," new techniques inside the classroom are engaging students to interact with peers through activity-based assignments. To observe how much is actually retained from the learning experience, teachers assign a reflective essay assessing the lesson and what each student takes with them.

This new technique can be daunting for teachers who have no experience employing these tactics. The workshop at Boise State University, entitled "Integrating Experiential Reflection in the Classroom," was held recently in The Center for Teaching and Learning. It was geared to provide teachers with tools and theories that offer a broader understanding of experiential learning and how to integrate the reflection process into curriculum.

It modeled the process and provided a list of specific activities that can improve the connection between classroom instruction and reflection of knowledge in real world application, ready to plug and play.