College of San Mateo Experiential Learning Essay

Description

What is Experiential Learning?:
Experiential learning is a student-centered, engaged-inquiry pedagogy that offers students the opportunity to learn through experience and reflection. It allows students to move learning beyond the confines of the classroom and engage intellectually, creatively, emotionally, and/or socially to the themes of the course. It allows students to learn in a “real world” context or to connect experiences that happen outside the classroom to their academic work. By thinking analytically about your activity, thinking contemplatively about your experience and how it influences your understanding of a particular topic, and thoughtfully posting that with the class on a discussion board, you are creating and sharing knowledge. Experiential learning also has the abilities to foster community building so you are encouraged to participate in activities with fellow students. This can be done via Zoom or other forms of social media.
Selecting an Activity:
Experiential learning activities can come in a variety of forms including engagement in a contemporary social, political, or cultural movement, volunteerism, community engagement, attending public lectures that are live-streamed or recorded, museum visits (virtually), archival exploration, visiting historic sites or relevant public spaces, volunteering, participating in community events, community exploration, religious or spiritual exploration, etc. . . . You can find events and activities (many that are live-streamed or recorded) on our SMCCD campuses, at other local colleges and universities, at museums, libraries, archives, art galleries, music venues, and community centers. 
It is important that you select your activity carefully. You should do something that is interesting and meaningful to you AND that you can, in some way, relate back to the themes of the course.
We will do a brainstorming discussion board and share events/places/activities that might be relevant and interesting a few weeks before each experiential learning assignment.
Reflection Essays:
Once you are ready, please write a thoughtful and insightful essay that thoroughly explains the activity you engaged in, why you selected this activity, what you learned from the activity, how that learning is connected to what you are learning in the course (this can be broadly connected—maybe it is directly related to a particular topic or more indirectly related to a theme of the course), and how this experience changes, enhances, and/or complicated your thinking about the topic/theme. 

Explanation & Answer:
4 pages

Tags:
ethnicity

capacity

experiential learning

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