Experiential Learning and University Teaching: Exploring Emotion and Supporting Experiential Pedagogies across Disciplinary Contexts

Event Date & Time

Event Description

Amid the release of a new UBC Strategic Plan and increased calls to integrate Experiential Learning (EL) into higher education, there is a growing need to unpack what it means for learning to be “experiential.” In this session Kari Grain will facilitate an exploration of EL as a pedagogical concept that has underlying theoretical currents, values, and motivations driven largely by you – the instructor/professor. To ground our conversation in practice, we look at the teaching strategies of UBC History professor, Dr. Tara Mayer (Department of History, UBC), who has found that engagement with emotion and controversial topics can invoke a specific kind of “experiential learning” within the classroom. To illustrate our work, we will share findings from a SoTL Seed research project carried out in Winter 2018, offering up perspectives of students and their emotional engagement with controversial topics in Mayer’s courses on the history of modern India. Through this session, you will gain an awareness of emotions-as-experiences in the classroom, strategize ways to engage with “the pedagogy of discomfort,” and brainstorm additional EL techniques that can be taken up to enrich various teaching contexts and topics. We will also share UBC specific resources that can connect you to people, projects, and funds that may support you in the integration of EL into your courses.

The goals of this session are:
a) Unpack experiential learning as a pedagogical concept (in both theory and practice)
b) Share findings from Dr. Mayer’s History courses that invoke emotion-as-experience
c) Discuss the possible uses of “the pedagogy of discomfort” in various teaching contexts
d) Brainstorm strategies to help you integrate experiential learning into diverse teaching contexts
e) Connect you with UBC resources (people, units, research, and funds) that can support you to achieve your teaching goals in relation to experiential learning

This event is part of our CTLT Summer Institute. For more Institute events, please click here.

Facilitators:

Kari Grain, Analyst, Experiential and Integrated Learning, Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Tara Mayer, Professor, Department of History