Best Practices for Experiential Learning
The most successful ELOs include the following components or characteristics:
- Hands-on application, engagement in real-world contexts
- Challenging, rigorous experiences, relationship to academic learning
- Expert guidance, supervision, or mentorship
- Meaningful intensity & duration
- Structured student reflection, feedback, & assessment
The following sections provide resources for ELO facilitators, including faculty, staff, and other mentors, to achieve some of the components listed above.
Mentoring
Effective mentoring in experiential learning involves structured guidance that helps students develop technical skills and professional competencies while connecting their experiences to broader learning objectives.
Quality mentoring goes beyond supervision to include goal-setting, regular check-ins, constructive feedback, and scaffolded support that gradually increases student independence. Effective mentoring can also focus on aspects of professional development such as exploring careers, networking, and identifying opportunities for professional growth.
Key Components:
- Clear expectations and learning objectives
- Regular, structured communication
- Constructive feedback and goal-setting
Resources and Tools
- NASEM Online Guide: The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM – Key lessons from the National Academies’ Committee on the Science of Effective Mentoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine. The Mentoring Tools section, in particular, has useful resources for individual mentors.
- CIMER – Trainings, resources, and curricula to improve mentoring in research settings, based on work by scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Reflection
Reflection helps students make sense of their experiences by creating transferable links between knowledge and practice – moving students from description and explanation to evaluation and critique. In the context of experiential learning, reflection offers a chance for students to link what they are learning in their studies to a real-world experience. Through reflection, students’ experiences can also shape and sharpen their personal and professional goals and values.
Whether done individually or in groups, well-structured reflection exercises can generate, deepen, and document student learning.
Key components:
- Regular and ongoing, not just end-of-experience
- Structured around specific prompts or frameworks that target learning objectives
- Deepened through feedback and/or discussion
Resources and Tools
- OEL/PKG Reflection Resources Guide – Comprehensive toolkit with prompts, frameworks, and activities
Assessment
Assessing experiential learning starts with having clear and observable learning outcomes. In experiential contexts, these outcomes are rarely quantifiable and often hard to measure. The student-directed nature of much experiential learning also makes direct observation of student learning challenging. However, simply assuming that learning is happening does a disservice to students and programs alike.
Tools for assessing experiential learning can often involve assignments including reflections and presentations that are already built into the experience. Other strategies such as surveys, exit interviews, and peer or supervisor evaluations can capture outcomes related to dispositions and interpersonal skills. Regardless of the strategies used, assessments should consistently be used to inform program improvements and provide feedback to students.
Key components:
- When possible, combine multiple types of assessment
- Choose assessments that target specific learning outcomes and match the pedagogical approach
- Assesses both process and product
Resources and Tools
- TLL Explainer: How to Use Rubrics – A brief overview of rubrics from MIT’s Teaching + Learning Lab
- AAC&U VALUE Rubrics – Standardized rubrics for assessing key learning outcomes
Need Additional Support?
Our office provides consultation on experiential learning program development, assessment design, and implementation strategies. Contact us if you have questions or would like to discuss your specific program needs.