Numerous institutions are focusing on expanding experiential learning opportunities for engineering students. Kolb [1] defines experiential learning as an iterative process involving conceptualization, active experimentation, concrete experience, and reflective observation. Experiential learning has also been identified as an important pedagogical feature of current engineering education leaders in the recent MIT report "The Global State of the Art in Engineering Education" [2]. Many believe experiential learning provides more real-world learning environments and opportunities to build skill sets that may not necessarily be provided in the classroom such as leadership, problem solving, and teamwork. However, as noted by Chan [3], while experiential learning has been increasingly explored and adopted, few have researched the appropriate assessment methods that can be aligned with the learning outcomes of experiential learning.
This paper analyzes survey responses to a set of experiential learning student outcomes questions from 1500 undergraduate engineering students at a large R1 institution. Responses are primarily from questions included on the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium survey. The SERU Consortium is a group of leading research-intensive universities who collaborate on a range of activities including the generation of institutional, comparative, and longitudinal data on the student experience in research universities [4]. In addition to the SERU questions, several additional questions were asked about the specific student experience at the institution.
In order to assess the impact of experiential learning, responses from students who had participated in one or more the college’s experiential learning opportunities such as student project teams or a project with the multidisciplinary design program were compared with students who did not participate. Only activities that were intentionally designed as an experiential learning opportunity were included in the analysis.
Several key findings - all with a statistically significant difference (
John Callewaert is Director of Strategic Projects in the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, College of Engineering, University of Michigan. He previously served as a program director with the University of Michigan's Graham Sustainability Institute.
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