Building experiential learning into external degree programs

Abstract

Learning the actual world is not possible apart from experience of it. The earliest learning in human history resulted from direct encounter with realities, as does the earliest learning for every child. Experiential learning the learner directly encounters what he learns -is thus nothing new. What is more recent, in both human events and in the individual's education, is substitution of symbolic transmissions of outcomes of earlier encounters with reality for a portion of experiential encounters. Such substitution costs less and consumes less time to tell someone other lands and other peoples than to enable the learner to go to those lands and peoples and to know them firsthand. The telling about kind of education without experience of what telling about points to often is misleading and incomplete, easy to forget, less stimulating and motivating, and less useful for development of skill and understanding than education with an appropriate experiential component. At the same time, a person can avoid serious mistakes and misunderstandings if before going abroad he benefits from being told by those with previous experience and longer reflection the culture, area, and people he will encounter. Educators commonly understand the themes of the preceding paragraph. Those themes, however, are not applied commonly to the task of capitalizing upon the nature of external degree programs to enhance their educational effectiveness. Some external degree programs are empty of appropriate experiential content. This essay addresses the need for systematic effort to build experiential learning into those programs. First, we examine a framework of theory which identifies the functions of experiential elements in a program. Then we elaborate the point that merely being off campus does not guarantee that a program will fulfill these functions. Next, we define some better forms of external degree programs, and adduce example programs as to what we can accomplish by appropriate uses of experience. Finally, we offer concluding remarks implications of these ideas regarding individualization of programs and forms they should take.