Academic Leads= Professor Karen Burland & Greg Miller 

Project description:

I am working alongside my research partner Oscar Kennedy to better understand the impact and experience of experiential learning activities on students at the University of Leeds.

Experiential learning is a way of designing learning activities in flexible, creative, and adaptable ways; it values the processes of learning as much as the outcomes; it is a form of learning that involves the whole person in the process of developing skills, knowledge, self-awareness and sense of being and belonging in the world. The insights gathered through this project will inform the institutional approach to Experiential learning within the curriculum.

This summer, we will review materials that have been compiled and developed by student interns working on the broad Experiential Learning project, focusing on perspectives relating to student experiences of experiential learning. We will also develop a process to review the resources and prepare a report to summarise the key experiences and impact of experiential learning for students. 

Our research will be utilised in the design of staff training programs based on digital resources based on student perceptions, to develop this style of learning, both at the University of Leeds and other international partner universities during our Leadership in Action element of the programme. In addition, we will design podcast episodes to serve as supplementary learning resources, based on our collated student perception conclusions, for implementing experiential learning into curriculums.

We are so excited to make a direct impact on our (and worldwide) university curriculums as students, for students to thrive in education due to experiential learning, and stay tuned for updates on our research journey!