Inquiry Project: Reflection

I had fun doing this inquiry project. Before the project, I had always been curious about experiential learning, because I remember having a lot of fun in my math classes in elementary school with all the hands-on activities. I thought that experiential learning is just doing hands-on activities and seeing the concepts take place in real life. Through this project, I realized how many forms of experiential learning there are, such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, simulations, demonstrations, and traditional labs. When I was in high school, I had fun doing all the projects and labs that my teacher assigned. From this project, I learned about how much work is actually needed behind the projects and labs to keep them aligned with the curriculum and prepare the materials required.

Through talking to my SA and students at my practicum school, I was surprised by how most of them highlighted working with other people as one of the main skills to develop through experiential learning. I was also surprised to hear from one student that working in a group actually makes it harder for them to understand the concepts. I learned from my SA that collaboration with teachers is very important in implementing experiential learning, as it makes the work easier. I realized how some students feel nervous about experiential activities because they worry that they would make mistakes, and also because of safety concerns. Like I expected, students found lab reports the most stressful part of experiential learning, but I was surprised that they said they understood it was an unavoidable part of the process. Students also highlighted how, without enough background information, experiential learning becomes very challenging and stressful for them.

I also realized how much our inquiries overlap with each other in this class. For example, place-based learning related to the outdoor education in Will's presentation, my SA recommended the "Building a Thinking Classroom" book as a first step to implement experiential learning, which directly connects to Jimena and JJ's inquiry.

Overall, I learned a lot through this inquiry project and I am excited to be able to try out some activities involving experiential learning in my long practicum!

Inquiry Project: Connection to Real World of Teaching and Learning

 For my inquiry project, I chose to interview my SA and students at my practicum school about experiential learning. And the following is the response I got: 

For Teachers

1. Understanding & Practice

How do you define experiential learning in your teaching

        learning by doing: students learn by working hands on, experiments, real world examples

What kinds of activities do you use that you would consider experiential?

        physics: labs; math: real world examples, projects, relate smt to an active problem in student lives; chemistry: students calculate now many sodium atoms are in their snack of choice- 

How do you decide when to use an experiential approach vs. a traditional one?

        balance: schedule, time, use as much as possible, get people moving, get people working through their own inquiries, hard to get content across with only experiential learning

2. Student Learning

What changes do you notice in student engagement when you use experiential activities?

        focused, they collaborate more, good learning through collaboration

How do students typically respond to hands-on or real-world tasks?

        excitement, they are happy about it, students are engaged, students produce good results

What kinds of learning outcomes do you think experiential learning supports best?

        hitting curricular competencies and assess curricular competencies 

3. Design & Implementation

What challenges do you face when planning experiential lessons?

        materials: getting required materials

        getting it aligned with content

        with true inquiry based projects: need to keep students centered to make sure that they are hitting the curricular competencies

        not much 

What resources or supports make experiential learning easier to implement?

        teamwork: collaboration with teachers***(most important)

        thinking classroom book

Can you describe a memorable experiential activity you’ve done that worked especially well?

        geology: the tectonic plates: cake: subsections

        took a long time

        he baked a cake with multiple layers (with food coloring) for each student, and students use a straw to get a sample of the cake and measure the height of each layer -> and they take multiple samples to draw a cross section of the layers of the cake

        students had fun and got to eat the cake afterwards

        students were excited and were measuring each layer to one tenth of a millimeter 

4. Reflection & Assessment

How do you help students reflect on their experiential learning?

        talk about it in groups and as a class

        reflection page 

How do you assess learning from hands-on tasks?

        checklist or a rubric

pro: major engagement and improvement, students can collaborate and reflect

cons: time to prep, getting required materials, sometimes can lose focus, students can go on tangent

For Students

1. Experiences

What types of hands-on or real-world activities have you done in class?

        Labs, hands-on activities, warm up questions involving connection to real world (sodium level), simulations (PhET)

Which experiential activity do you remember most, and why?

        Labs: its hands on, gets to really see it happen in person, gives more of an understanding feel for him

        Labs > hands on> simulations

        Hands on than note packages because you can see what’s happening

        Making the solutions (learning how to use titration lab equipments), [because they just did it]

        Question involving real world applications, because it allows you to connect concepts to your everyday life

        Tesla coil: burning, heat up oxygen, diffraction demo

How did you feel during these activities?

        Fun, get to interact with classmates, understand topics more deeply

        Happy

        Useful , because hands on activities allows them to practice using the equipment before doing the actual lab

        More enjoyable than classroom work

        More engaging

        Nervous

            Don’t want to make mistakes

        Fun

        Seeing reactions: chemical reactions

        Better than doing notes constantly

        Gets more experience doing them

        Other than just being thrown the concepts, abstract

        Actually see how it works

2. Learning Impact

Did the activity help you understand the topic better? How?

        Yes, give you an easier way to look at new concepts

        Yes, visualize concepts

        Working in a team makes it harder to understand

        Yes, explains it better

Do you prefer experiential activities or traditional lessons? Why?

        Hands on, because it’s more fun

        Hands on, because brain understands it better

        Hands on > theoretical

        What skills do you feel you learned from hands-on tasks?

        Lab skills

        Lab procedure

        Safety 

        Working with other people

        Calibrate machines

        How to properly do experiments

        Remove bias in experiment

        Scientific methodology

3. Preferences & Suggestions

What kinds of experiential activities would you like to try in the future?

        Lab 

What makes a hands-on activity fun or meaningful for you?

        Doing something is better than just listening

        Bio: you cant see results

        Chem: nice seeing the results, fun to do

Is there anything that makes experiential activities stressful or challenging?

        No, lab reports

        Worksheets

        Notes

        Report, 

        Safety

            Chemicals damaging your body

        Without background information, something we've never done before it is challenging

        Like the lab reports

        Lab reports: the long boring part, unavoidable, but just a boring process