From the Shadow of Overconfidence Into the Light of Humility: Reflections on Experiential Learning Activities Gone Awry

Abstract

Many instructors use experiential learning techniques to link students’ academic experience with the reality that awaits them professionally. Careful planning and reflecting on experiential activities usually take place prior to implementation to ensure that prescribed student learning outcomes are met. Hence, management educators’ confidence soars when outcomes meet or exceed their expectations, and there is the intrinsic reward of seeing students succeed. Subsequently, effective application of activities can lead to overconfidence in implementing routine as well as new activities. What happens, however, when an activity goes awry? Can it be salvaged? In this article, we explore overconfidence as the shadow that can disrupt a faculty’s well-meaning activity, leading to something unexpected with unintended learning consequences for the instructor and students. Then, we analyze several of our activities gone awry as a result of overconfidence. Finally, we suggest humility as a spotlight that can help us move out of the shadow cast by overconfidence, thus helping faculty deal with the dark side of experiential exercises.

Experiential Learning and the Moral Duty of Business Schools

“…Practical understanding: Practical understanding is "the knowledge that derives from being a competent member of a practice" such that the shared understanding makes sense to the individuals involved in the practice, even though all may not agree with the actions taken (Nicolini, 2012, p. 165 (Taylor, 2018) and unexpectedly poor learning outcomes (Edelson et al, 2018), among others.…”

Can Your Students Save the World? Utilizing Pandemic®, a Cooperative Board Game, to Teach Management

“…Additionally, the complexity of the game brings in multiple management concepts, which makes it an excellent option as a course capstone as these same types of complexities and breadth are not available through simpler experiential activities. However, this complexity can also lead to unexpected outcomes that the instructor may not be able to plan for (like many experiential exercises), which could require instructor humility to manage (Edelson et al, 2019).…”

Instilling Competence: Emotional Preparation for Experiential Learning

“…While this framework addresses competence, it runs parallel with educator overconfidence. When an educator has been successful in hosting EL activities in the past, they may assume that the previous competence will apply to all types of EL, or all groups of students (Edelson et al, 2019). As the authors highlight, overconfidence increases the likelihood of risk taking while simultaneously decreasing self-assessment and reflection.…”

“…Recently, there have been explorations of the shadow side (which relates emotion and learning) of EL, including educator overconfidence (Edelson et al, 2019), intense emotions and resistance from students (Clancy & Vince, 2019), and recognition that EL has the potential to cause harm (Wright et al, 2019). As EL achieves prominence as a management education tool, educators cannot assume that they will be competent or effective simply because they are a subject matter expert or have had previous success with EL.…”