The Importance Of Experiential Learning

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As a student who is involved in hospitality management higher education, experiential learning is considered as a very crucial role for me. Recently, there is a trend of adopting experiential learning to the classroom (Tiger Li and Chiang-nan Chao, 2013). In terms of school study, workshop and class activity are also kinds of experiential leaning. Workshop and class activity allow the speaker and the audience to communicate with each other during a lecture or presentation. The importance of these two interactive learning styles is easily to bee seen, since I have experienced two kinds of totally different educational environments. In Taiwan, where I had been studying tourism management for three years in university, I’ve never had any workshop …show more content…

Doing class activities actually helps a lot when it comes to tough academic theories. Through class activities, we need to think and analyze theories; we discuss with others, argue each one’s opinion and come up with the final agreements. We adopt all four stages of Experiential Learning Cycle; first we have a case study or a question for us to find the answer; second we associate it with the knowledge we learn from previous presentation or class; third we understand better about the task or question and come up with the specific concept towards the question; last we apply our knowledge and find together the answer or solution. It certainly makes it much easier to memorize theories and they last in the mind much longer than listening to lectures because we practically go through and use them toward situations. After case studying, teachers often give us feedback and suggestion; or even point out additional questions for us to brainstorm. Workshop is the similar concept that audience fulfills the challenge given by the speaker and learns or gets better understanding of the …show more content…

Experiential learning can be applied in situations where students or employees are looking forward to gaining skills to build confidence and competence (Anne Llewellyn and Sarah Frame, 2012). Internship is a career relevant work obtained by students before graduating from an academic program (Lynda Holyoak, 2013). Internship is seen as a short period of practical experience, which students can get training and obtain experience in a certain professional field. Internships could or could have not providing salary; and should be enable interns to apply the knowledge to the real working environment in order to fill the gap between academic theories and the practice. Most of the students look for employment while completing their degrees for gaining real-world experience (Marlena A. Bednarska and Marcin Olszewski,