Experiential Learning to Create Authentic Learning

by Haley Korcz

hen in your academic career did you question why you were learning something or how it would benefit you in real life? Did real-life connections from your academic learning impact your career choice? When I started my undergraduate career in environmental biology I found it hard to relate to what I was learning in some courses. I gravitated to environmental sciences because they were more understandable from experiences and questions I already developed. Outdoor labs were a huge component of those courses, we learned outside with real examples and tools that people in that field used in their careers. In a wetland ecology course, we learned about delineating a wetland using our knowledge of wetland indicators and put it into practice delineating a plot of land. This took the knowledge from what we discussed about wetlands, types, features, how delineations work, and the flora and fauna and built it into one activity where I truly understood my learning because I learned by doing.

These experiences led me to Islandwood, an outdoor school because I realized in order to teach science and conservation, students have to understand what they are being taught and be able to make connections to their lives and what is happening in the world around them. The purpose of the education system is to prepare students “for both their personal and professional lives – education and life should not be isolated from each other” (Pearce 2016, p.3). As an educator, how can we best serve our students in preparing them for life beyond a classroom?
Experiential learning, which can be used inside or outside classrooms, occurs during environmental education and creates authentic learning for students.

What is Experiential Learning?

“Learning from experiences”, “learning by doing”, “trial and error learning”, “experience-based learning” are all concepts that describe experiential learning (Schwartz 2012, p. 1 and Gentry 1990, pp.1-2). Experiential learning theory is an interdisciplinary approach where students engage in intentional learning activities that can be applied to real-world situations (Gentry 1990, p. 10 and Schwartz 2012). This method combines many academic areas, like science, math, and art, into one project that could be applied to a professional career. Reflecting on these experiences are also just as important as the experiences themselves. Reflection by the learners is a critical component to create metacognition, thinking about thinking, “to develop new skills, new attitudes, or new ways of thinking” (Schwartz 2012, p. 1). This process can help students form new perspectives on situations. To model and reflect real life, outcomes from experiential activities should vary and be unpredictable and there should be many outcomes and means of getting there (Schwartz 2012). This process is similar to how engineers can develop different designs to solve the same problem.

Sophocles’ quote from 400 B.C., “One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it-you have no certainty, until you try.” (Gentry 1990, p. 9). Students given an opportunity to demonstrate concepts, ideas, or theories in an interactive setting are learning by doing. Learning by doing can be used to demonstrate student learning to the teacher and help identify any misconceptions or gaps in learning that the student may have.
The role of instructors and learners is different in experiential learning. Students manage their own learning by identifying the knowledge they need to gain, how they can acquire it themselves, being able to provide evidence to their claims, and reflecting on learning (Schwartz 2012). Instructors are present to facilitate learning by providing resources, support, and questioning students to “tell me more” and “why?” (Schwartz 2012).

How to Design an Experiential Learning Activity

Long-term goals for students should include making meaning and transfer of knowledge and making goals prevalent when planning lessons and activities to help your students reach your goals (Wiggins 2013). When planning an experiential learning activity it is foremost to identify which part of the lesson would be most effective as an experiential learning activity that provides an equitable and culturally relevant experience for everyone. Then think of a real-world problem that relates to your goals and create an activity based on the problem that is challenging but manageable, provide clear expectations, allow necessary time, and allow students to change topics because a lack of interest is a lack of learning (Schwartz 2012).

There is a set of principles that define an activity as experiential (Schwartz 2012):
● mixture of content and process
● absence of excessive judgment
● engagement in purposeful endeavors
● encouraging the big picture perspective
● role of reflection

● creating emotional investment
● re-examination of values
● presence of meaningful relationships
● learning outside of one’s perceived comfort zone

To elaborate on these principles it is important to have experiential activities with content learning embedded. Students have a zone of proximal development, where they are cognitively prepared to learn with guidance, and when students are pushed out of their zone of proximal development learning may not occur even with guidance (Vygotsky 1986). Creating a safe place where students feel a lack of judgment can be accomplished by participating in team building, discussion norms, modeling culture of error and how to learn from those mistakes. It is important for students to understand why they are doing an activity or learning about something so that it has a purpose and meaning to them and instructors can help create an emotional investment through a relevance in students’ lives (Schwartz 2012). Reflecting on an activity can help students relate the topic to a bigger picture, learn about a different perspective of thinking, and provide a space to think about what they have learned.

Water-Themed Experiential Learning Activities:

Islandwood is an outdoor school that has a school overnight program on Bainbridge Island. As an instructor, I receive a different group of students from a different school each week ranging between 4th-6th graders. My lesson plan focuses on water and human interacts in an outdoor setting but this plan can be adapted for a classroom setting. When planning a water-themed week my objective for students is to understand the movement and cycle of water, water supply in their home, and where pollution can come from and to demonstrate this through discussion, reflection questions, and activities. The activity that I designed from a real-world problem was pollution released into Puget Sound. There was a series of lessons and activities scaffolded to help increase meaning and the ability to transfer student learning into other settings.

My first lesson is a discussion and game about the movement and cycle of water. In order to hook my students into the first water-themed lesson, I use a blow-up globe that the students toss around and say where their left thumb landed on, water or land. Then I ask students how much of the Earth do they think is covered in water. Next, ask the students why they think it is important to understand the water cycle. This engages students physically, mentally, and emotionally at the beginning of the lesson as well as giving a purpose. Students may quickly identify water as an essential limited resource but a common misconception may be that we are losing water instead of water just changing forms. The discussion continues with where the water is found, its forms, and how the water moves. This will help identify students’ prior knowledge and provide new content. To follow up the discussion students played a water cycle game where they pretended to be a water drop moving through the cycle. This game consists of nine stations: oceans, rivers, lakes, groundwater, glaciers, plants, animals, clouds, soil and students move through the methods of precipitation, transpiration, evaporation, percolation, sublimation by rolling dice to receive their method of movement to their next location. Students should track which stations they went to and their method of movement. They can then share their paths as a water drop with a partner or as small groups. Reflection questions for this activity could be: why was everyone’s journey different? and what are the similarities and difference between the game and the real water cycle? Knowledge could also be evaluated in a Venn diagram comparing the real water cycle and water cycle game and then asking why they think those differences exist. Depending on student knowledge or the prior lesson discussion students may understand that humans can change the water cycle and that is not reflected in the game. Humans may change the flow of rivers, build dams, increase impermeable surfaces which increase runoff and many others.

To continue my water-themed week I used a relief map of Islandwood, a new space that they will be exploring but it could be adapted for a space that students are familiar with, like their schools watershed. My opening question was to ask students about their knowledge of what a watershed is. Once explained I asked students to view the map from a bird’s eye perspective and a ground level perspective and to identify how water flows across Islandwood’s landscape. Students identify high and low points of the map and where a water drop would flow to. In Islandwood’s watershed water flows to Blakely Harbor which is part of Puget Sound. Most of the children who come to Islandwood are from the Puget Sound area and this is a relatable place for them. As a follow-up activity, students pour water on a watershed relief map so that they can visually track the flow of water from different starting points. After these activities students have the ability to walk to Blakely Harbor and explore the shape of the landscape.

The next water-themed activity is to have students map the water supply in their homes by drawing using details and labels. Students identified where their water comes from, how it is used within their homes, and where it goes after it goes down the drain. This activity provides an opportunity for students to share their prior knowledge with the group. Each student may have knowledge about a different aspect of this activity, like where their water is sourced from a well or city and if they have a septic tank or sewer system. Once children understand where their water is coming from they can think about how it is used in their home and what is being added to the water that goes down the drain. Students can be asked what is happening to the other “stuff” that goes down the drain. They may think that wastewater treatment plants remove all of the other “stuff” which opens up a conversation of what cannot be remove and what happens to the system when it is overloaded. A relatable example is that caffeine cannot be removed by wastewater treatment plants and high amounts have been found in the Puget Sound. As an instructor, you could also use this moment to examine other ways pollution enters into waterways. This creates an emotional investment for students because it is using a space they care about and are familiar and comfortable with. This helps put meaning to their learning by connecting what is occurring in their homes on a larger scale of what is happening in the world. In my experiences, students have developed a lot of questions about where their home water supply comes from and pollution that is going down their drains. This activity helps create that “ah-ha” moment what students realize the impact each individual has on a bigger scale. Reflections questions for this activity could be: what happens to all the water and stuff that goes down our drains? how do you think we get clean water in our homes? and why do you think learning about water is important? Students should be able to collaborate while developing maps and present their work. This allows an option for students to ask questions to each other and increase their knowledge for their own maps.

On Islandwood’s campus, there are many composting toilets that the students use. These provide a setting for discussing water use, composting, and human feces pollution. At first, most students predict it will be disgusting and smell bad but once they experience the end of the compost cycle they decide the moist wood shaving aren’t so bad. Together we explore how the nutrients we take in when we eat can be returned to nature and help increase the nutrient availability for plants to grow. This is also a positive option to reduce water consumption to share with students in comparison to flush toilets. In a setting where composting toilets are not available, videos, diagrams, and other tools may help replicate the experience.

Another teaching location at Islandwood is the living machine, where campus wastewater treatment is occurring. The liquid waste goes through a series of vegetated tanks, sand filters, UV light, and chlorination before being returned to the environment. This system demonstrates the power of plants and the effort and time it takes to reduce human waste pollution. This lesson connects students back to their water supply mapping activity and elaborates their knowledge. Touring a wastewater treatment facility would be a great alternative lesson.

The final activity to connect all of the water-themed lessons and activities is for students to design a solution to clean up the Puget Sound from the scenario of an earthquake releasing a massive amount of pollution into the sound. The students’ solution should be a detailed drawing with written explanations. This problem is realistic, current, and can be solved through a variety of methods. A path map of lessons and activities from student learning should be created to help get students brains flowing with ideas. Additional background content for students can come from YouTube videos about ocean cleanup efforts and noise pollution around Puget Sound. The videos I have chosen demonstrate skills engineers use like seeing room for improvement, re-designing, making models and repeating the process over and over before building the final product. This leads to a discussion about what being an engineer means and continuous improvements. One video shows a young person who designed their own ocean cleanup method, which can be more relatable to young children. Students should be offered the option to collaborate to continue learning from their peers as well as the ability to change their idea. When checking in with each student about their project, discuss the resources that would go into their solution and ask questions like “tell me more” and “can you explain how that will work” to help them notice any flaws their design has. Students can then make edits they feel are necessary. This allows students to reflect without judgment and create a polished design. Students should present their design to the class.

What is Authentic Learning?

Authentic learning theory is learning intended to connect classroom experiences that are interdisciplinary, complex, ambiguous, and can be solved through various methods to reflect “real world issues, problems, and applications” (Pearce 2016, p.1). This theory has three goals of learning: acquisition, making meaning, and transfer (Pearce 2016). Acquisition is the learning or development of new skills which can be achieved through critical thinking and problem-solving. Children need to make meaning of learning, otherwise without a connection to prior or new knowledge it may be forgotten. The connection that is formed between prior knowledge and new learning helps transfer learning to new situations. This can also be aided through wrap-ups of activities or new activities that build off to relate it to something familiar to the students.

Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” (Pearce 2016, p. 2). Student engagement and meaningfulness increases when activities are relevant to students’ lives outside of the classroom. Understanding cannot be told to students by instructors but it can be aided by using assessment as part of the learning process, learning with students, reflection, and relating the topic to real-world applications.

How Was Authentic Learning Created During Water-Themed Experiential Learning Activities:

The final water-themed activity, designing a solution to clean up pollution in Puget Sound, built off of planned scaffolding throughout the week. The engineering activity created authentic learning through the use of a real-world problem, designing an applicable unique solution, using interdisciplinary skills including art, English language arts, critical thinking, and science. This project could even be expanded to include project materials and cost estimates to include mathematics. Students were able to feel emotionally connected to their project, link prior and new knowledge, transfer learning to design a solution, and use critical thinking skills.

Experiential learning is focused on the reflection of the experience while authentic learning is focused on making meaning and transferring those skills into a new situation. The most effective method for creating authentic learning is through experiential learning.

References:
Gentry, J. W. (1990). What is Experiential Learning? Retrieved from: https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u5/2013/WHAT%20IS%20EXPERIENTIAL%20%20LEARNING%3F%20%20.pdf

Pearce, S. (2016). Authentic learning: What, why, and how? e-Teaching Management Strategies for the Classroom. Retrieved from: http://www.acel.org.au/acel/ACEL_docs/Publications/e-Teaching/2016/e-Teaching_2016_10.pdf

Schwartz, M. (2012). Best Practices in Experiential Learning. Retrieved from: https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/lt/resources/handouts/ExperientialLearningReport.pdf

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Wiggins, G. [AVENUESdotORG]. (2013, February 28). Grant Wiggins – Understanding by design. [Video File]. Retrieved