Experiential learning, community engagement, and student experience: Undergraduate field school course in rural British Columbia

Abstract

Field courses are important for geographical education and for developing transferable skills. Community partners add richness and depth to student experiences in field course design. Students are regarded as possessors of their own learning experience, with the role of the instructor as a facilitator.Experiential learning enables students to bridge their learned skills and their professional life after university. Emphasizing the value of a social science degree, we argue that undergraduate students do not lack transferable skills, but rather they lack the realization of and confidence in applying these skills. Through a community-based field course, students not only build skills-they use them in a real-world context. This paper reflects on a geography field course located in a town in British Columbia. The course encourages students to manage community partner relationships and exposes them to new approaches to learning, including forms of assessment. The impact of the field course was assessed through an online survey and a focus group. Although students find aspects of a field course challenging, the overall experience of this course was very positive. The success of the field school course was, and is, in enabling students to realize the value of their transferable skills.

Perceptions of Environmental Science and Management Students on Synchronous Online Teaching of Environmental Policies: Learning Experience from Southeast Asian Cohort

“…As what the students have expressed in the interviews and was personally observed during the conduction of the online class by the researchers, uncontrollable technical glitches that can transpire or even the physical challenges experienced by students during the online class have impeded the learning experience of the students. This premise has been demonstrated on studies that have showcase how frequent technical problems may result in the disconnection of a learner in the learning community (Liu et al, 2007;McPhee & Przedpelska, 2018). To address such challenges, deliberate planning and designing of a clear back-up plans of technical support for the online courses is a pre-requisite (Gallagher-Lepak et al, 2009) as what have been similarly verbalized by the student cohort that having clear schedule of all online meetings and online submission of course requirements would be a criteria for a quality effective synchronous online learning.…”

Growing hearts and minds: Linking landscapes and lifescapes in a soils field course

“…Field courses offer ample opportunities to apply technical knowledge to real‐life situations, and they are generally valued across scientific disciplines for their ability to help students acquire hands‐on skills relevant to future professional careers (Hartemink et al., 2014; McPhee & Przedpelska, 2018). Therefore, it is not surprising that 71% of students in our course mentioned an increase in their confidence for independently carrying out tasks such as describing soil profiles, estimating soil texture, and identifying landscape characteristics affecting soil formation.…”

“…There are typically major differences in the types of tasks students are asked to carry out in the classroom environment and the types of tasks they will carry out as professionals. Field courses help bridge that gap through the application of technical concepts to real‐world environments (McPhee & Przedpelska, 2018). It is our experience that building confidence in technical skills during the field course can also motivate students to seek out additional ways to hone their skills, such as enrolling in additional soil science classes or joining the campus soil judging team.…”

Practical Heutagogy: Promoting Personalized Learning in Management Education

“…In a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA; Bennett & Lemoine, 2014; Chai & Kong, 2017), managers are therefore required to be adaptable to changing contexts and demands as “path-benders,” each of who because of their personal professional context will have individual learning goals (Jones, 2010; McPhee & Przedpelska, 2018; Richardson et al, 2017; van Laere & Lindblom, 2018). Consequently, those who devise management education programs have engaged in discourse on how to refashion approaches to teaching and learning within Business Schools to develop future skill sets; in particular, a number of specific challenges in relation to the facilitation of enquiry-based and collaborative learning.…”