Building And Evaluating Experiential Learning Mechanisms

Carter, C., Bishop, J., & Kravitz, S.L. (2011). Key to Effective Learning: Study Skills and Habits

Students who have mixed types of problems than students who had the same type of problems but different questions achieved higher scores on a test. By varying study material, students learn to apply a strategy to a certain type of problem while a different strategy to another problem. This provides proof that the traditional studying methods of studying the same skill repeatedly are not the best method for studying. In addition, college students had to study a list of 40 vocabulary words. College students who studied in two different rooms and another set of college students had to study in the same room for the period the college students studied in different rooms.

In the book ‘’How We Learn’’ Benedict Carey teaches readers that learning doesn't have to be an isolated chore but more a part of living. The author gives readers tactics and strategies that can be used when studying to make learning and test taking easier. Readers will be able to use these techniques in their daily lives.

Students engage in experiential learning and co-curricular activities that take abstract ideas and anchor them in real-life problems. (Coye 20 [9])

This student’s preferred learning strategy compared to the learning strategy provided by V.A.R.K. is almost identical. The learning strategies that have been used throughout her education have always netted good results, which is evident by her grades. In the past other students have commented about her learning style and the amount of time spent on note taking, outlines, and writing out note cards, but she has perfected this process for her learning style.

The first two chapters of “What the Best College Students Do” cover several topics. Throughout the chapters, the lives and experiences of different college students are explored. A reoccurring theme in the book is the concept of learning styles. Essentially, the three learning styles are memorization, comprehension, and strategy. According to the author, comprehension is the most effective style of learning. While everyone will possess one of these three learning styles, it is not impossible for someone to adjust to another style. Additionally, the author elaborates on academic ideas such as independence, grades, and outside influences.

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

We all learn in diverse ways, inclined by the combination of our past educational experiences, study practices and personal approach to particular tasks. This can be designated as our learning style, defined as ‘particular ways of gathering, processing and storing information and experiences’ (Cuthbert, P.F., 2005).

Methods of teaching: There’s a real difference in our educational system compared to when i was last in school, two decades ago. One of the changes that have been accomplished in today’s society is to memorizing instead of using technology or using multiple choice. We are more likely hands on then doing things like the 21 century. Now we have been using save word document and many other things within using technology. We have choices to

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate my experiential learning of personal and social adjustments when confronted with life-changing events and the mechanisms utilized to effectively cope from traumatic experiences. The components supporting this piece include: confronting the problem, learning to adapt and cope, cultivating self-worth, the importance of a support system and over time change influencers. To support my understanding of personal and social adjustments, I will use the content of this paper to speak as evidence of my experiential learning derived from confronting a long-term spiritual abuse situation and process of unraveling and coping from its affects.

“Those who have characterized instruction tasks express dismay about the focus on low-level facts and skills and the omnipresence of worksheets in American classrooms” (Blumefeld, 1991, p. 370). Whenever I think about my own educational experiences, I remember thinking how what I was learning in school was separate from the outside world. Oftentimes this made learning difficult as I found myself finding the topics uninteresting and wondering if I would ever use this information in real life. I constantly tried to learn new information through route memorization and struggled with remembering information that I had previously “learned”.

During my time at Fullerton College, I have come to realize that every student has their own unique way to achieve their goals, whether it is to cram down tons of information before the day of the exam, highlight each section in their textbook, or receive support from the tutoring center. These tips are useful to most students, but for me I have come to learn that I have the capacity to learn two ways: reading the material until I have a eureka moment, or work the problem step by step until each component makes sense to me. Unfortunately, for me to have acquired this, I had to learn from trial and error, each course I would try something new and see if I could keep applying the same method for upcoming courses. Some would work, and others would

Learning is a multifaceted perception unique to each individual. In looking to address the intricacies of learning, there have been a multitude of learning theories established over the centuries. To this day new theories are developed and traditional theories continue to be developed and expanded upon. (Swinburne Online, 2016)

Although this limitation can become a barrier for the experiential learning theory Rogers’ developed, it is possible for this to overcome this with patience. As the main purpose of this theory is to allow personal growth within the student, we must note that personal growth appears differently for each individual learner. The role of the facilitator is to help engage all types of students in self-motivated learning to help them improve their overall growth from significant information.

In the reading Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development by David Kolb (1984), he proposed that learning is a cycle process in which individuals learn through their own experiences in life. This notion of the learning cycle in which he was influenced by the ideas of three other theorists (Piaget, Dewey, and Lewinian) called it Experiential Learning Theory. Kolb’s theory was based on how people learned by imputing information and processing the information. Within this two abilities, there are four steps in which Kolb’s believe the learning process occurs. The first one he calls “concrete experience”, in which one actually does the learning right then and now. The second one is “reflective observation” when the learner thinks about what they did as a reflection of the experience. The next step is the “abstract conceptualization”, where the learner makes a generalization of the experience. The last step is “active experimentation”, where the learner puts to practice his/her understanding and adapts to it. The learner does this by taking all the first three steps of the learning cycle and seeing the results (pg. 30). Learning is a process in which individuals learn through trial and error. This process can then be reused with our prior experience to strengthen the outcome of our first experience. It is shaped as a cycle in the way we process information cognitively. This is how I understood of the reading on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory.