Hands-on biological exploration has been shown to have a great impact on learning. When students "do" something, they remember more details than when they sit through a lecture describing the same activity. In this article, the authors present an exercise that has the potential to get all levels of students into the lab for practical experience…

A portion of the curriculum for a Management Information Systems degree was redesigned to enhance the experiential learning of students by focusing it on a three-semester community-based system development project. The entire curriculum was then redesigned to have a project-centric focus with each course in the curriculum contributing to the…

The article presents a thematic review of the recent research on workplace learning. It is divided into two main sections. The first section asks what we know about learning at work, and states four propositions: (1) the nature of workplace learning is both different from and similar to school learning; (2) learning in the workplace can be…

Two studies, an experimental category learning task and a computational simulation, examined how sequencing training instances to maximize comparison and memory affects category learning. In Study 1, 2-year-old children learned color categories with three training conditions that varied in how categories were distributed throughout training and…

In this Voices Inside Schools essay, Dr. Pat Clifford and Susan Marinucci take us inside a classroom engaged in "genuine inquiry." As we follow Russell and his fellow fifth-grade scientists through their exploration of desalination, we witness the evolving nature of questioning, learning, and understanding in spaces of inquiry. The authors offer…

Describes the challenges and rewards of teaching social work, noting mistakes and successes in his approach to the task/opportunity. Using a non-BSW class in community organization practice as the template, he assesses the adaptations needed to teach students with widely diverse academic backgrounds, emphasizing the importance of careful and…

Several reasons have been given why students should have contacts with real patients early in the undergraduate medical curriculum, i.e., in the preclinical phase. However, it is not clear exactly what effects early patient contacts have with regard to knowledge construction and the development of clinical reasoning skills. We sought students'…

This article describes how the green phenomenon is spreading, especially among schools, which have found that not only are they being environmentally friendly, they are also saving big money. Green buildings focus on efficiency and renewable energy, water stewardship, environmentally preferable building materials and specifications, waste…

Spring is the season when thousands of creased cardboard pests can be found lodged under the armpits of students and teachers as they observe the educational rite of spring known as the school science fair. A recent visit to a local school's gymnasium to witness one of these events reminded the authors of why they so dislike science fairs. In this…

Service learning, a form of experiential learning, is not a new idea. Students learn through participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet real community needs are are coordinated in collaboration with schools/faculty and community organizations. the service experiences are integrated into the students' academic curriculum,…

Intercultural competencies are more important for people in business than ever before. In this article, the authors present an approach they designed and used for developing "negotiating reality" as a key intercultural competence at an international business school in Europe. They outline the theoretical underpinnings from intercultural…

A century ago, John Dewey proposed educating children through a curriculum rich in real-life problem-solving experiences. While many traditional schools have been slow to adopt such methods, experiential learning is making a significant impact in alternative education, youth development, and treatment settings. Challenge and adventure activities…

In February 2007, the Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT) approved new standards for the certification of Challenge Course Practitioners. These standards will be used by accredited professional vendor members of ACCT in the training and certification of practitioners and may also be used as a reference by others. These new standards…

Active learning has attracted considerable attention in higher education in response to concerns about how and what students are learning. Many pedagogies may be categorized as active learning, although most are classroom-based. The authors propose an alternative to "active learning in the classroom", which they characterize as "active learning…

Experiential learning can be an effective way to teach many concepts, and evolution is no exception. We describe the pedagogical techniques, class structure and learning objectives, travel logistics, and impact of three undergraduate honors-level experiential learning seminars that combined teaching topics related to evolution with a field trip to…