Qualitative Pedagogical Findings To Improve Critical Thinking Skills

Abstract

The motivation for this paper comes from need - the need for our students to learn not only subject matter through traditional methods in a classroom, but foundational learning through experiences obtained directly in the workplace. The terminology used today for this student experience is referred to as experiential learning which comes in two forms, either learning 1) by yourself or 2) through experiential education (learning through programs established by others). You can kindly refer to learning by yourself as “nature’s way of learning” as it occurs as a direct participation in the life cycle. However, experiential education can be defined more succinctly as a structured approach, using experiences and the direction of others to create the learning curve.

The issue at hand is simple - does participatory (experiential) education create critical thinkers among our students and make them more aware of and able to more easily solve the problem(s) at hand? Our diligence has focused on two distinctly different courses in two different semesters (fall 2011 and spring 2012) in two different business disciplines (business marketing and entrepreneurship) at two distinctly different universities (Wagner College and Monmouth University) with one similar problem - is there a significant benefit to experiential learning over traditional classroom pedagogy?

Our findings are profound in the respect that both the participating subjects (students) and the participating businesses achieved significant benefits when this mode of education was used. Our conclusions in the paper signify that although more research is needed to further determine the significance of the impact of experiential learning, we have come away with a true picture of the educational benefits to the students and the productive benefits to the clients involved. An experiential educator's role is to organize and facilitate direct experiences of phenomenon under the assumption that this will lead to genuine (meaningful and long-lasting) learning. This often also requires preparatory and reflective exercises BOTH inside and outside the classroom.