Integrating Experiential Learning into Curriculum

While many forms of EL can be included in the learning experience in a variety of ways that is beneficial to the student, for data to be collected and reported (i.e., to support the calculation of the Experiential Learning SMA3 metric), an EL activity is

• a component of courses in programs;
• tracked at the individual level (i.e., an institution must be able to determine if a graduate participated in EL);
• available to all students enrolled in the program (e.g., students may elect not to participate in the EL activity and choose another optional activity required for completion of a course/program, but all students can access this EL activity);
• structured and meaningful, i.e., verified or evaluated and count towards course credit or credential completion (MCU, 2020).

Therefore, while co-curricular or extra-curricular activities remain valuable learning experiences for our students, EL activities should be a formal part of the curriculum for a course and available to all students in the course in order to be recognized and captured in data.

This means that curriculum design principles outlined in Table 2 should be followed.

A given program may provide multiple types of EL experiences. A given EL activity may have aspects of multiple types of EL but will be coded as only one EL type – the type that best describes the experience.

Table 2: Curriculum design and institutional system requirements

Note that if a structured work experience was available only to a subset of students in the program, then that EL experience will not be reported even for students that participated.