Week 8 Experiential Learning

 http://docplayer.net/35573296-Experiential-learning-and-its-facilitation.html

I found a really interesting article about Experiential Learning.  If you have the time please check it out!  I think that I found it especially interesting because it is extremely relevant to my current practice.  I am the Clinical Liaison for Medical Radiography Technology students doing their level one clinical practicum in North Island hospitals.  The article that I read discussed not only different perspectives on what experiential learning means, but also some of the factors which facilitate or act as barriers to learning.  The article is based on nursing education but can be easily applied to medical radiography.   

Some of the ideas that really jumped out at me when I read the article were that experiential learning is more than just direct experience with a patient in the clinical setting during a practicum placement.  With experiential learning it is important to internalise the experience that you have lived and compare it with your existing experience or knowledge. Next, one should take the opportunity to reflect on the experience and give it personal meaning.  According to Dewey, at this point, if the opportunity arises to take even a brief period of quietness to focus on the experience, deep learning can then happen. 

*My brain suddenly made the connection back to our course text in chapter ten.  On page two hundred we read about brain function and respecting the needs of the brain.  One activity that the brain needs for optimising brain function is to take time in reflection.  How great that there are a multitude of benefits to taking time to reflect!

Once a month over the four months that my students are in clinical practicum I have an assignment where students are required to write a short reflection paper based on their practice.  I recommend reading the reflection question well in advance of the due date to allow for the information to percolate in their mind before they decide which experience to choose to write about.  I have spoken to my students about how reflection allows for the opportunity to develop one's self, make discoveries about how to improve professional practice for future and improve one’s confidence. 

I am so excited to read my student’s first reflection next week and take the opportunity to discuss their reflection with them in the hopes of facilitating that overlap of reflection and experience.

I especially love the idea that my students can not only improve themselves but then can also help others to learn as well.  When this clinical practicum student group returns to the college next term I will be teaching them a preparation course for their second clinical term in a face to face learning context.  I am considering, with their approval of course, using their reflection papers from the previous term in a sharing format so that we can all learn from their joint experience together.