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Experiential education in theundergraduate curriculumRichard A. Katula a & Elizabeth Threnhauser ba Chair and Professor, Department of CommunicationStudies , Northeastern University , Boston, MA, 02115b Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies ,Northeastern UniversityPublished online: 18 May 2009.
To cite this article: Richard A. Katula & Elizabeth Threnhauser (1999) Experientialeducation in the undergraduate curriculum, Communication Education, 48:3, 238-255, DOI:10.1080/03634529909379172
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Experiential Education in theUndergraduate Curriculum
Richard A. Katula and Elizabeth Threnhauser
One of the most significant trends in higher education is the movement to an "expandedclassroom." Usually referred to as "experiential education," programs such as cooperativeeducation, internships, study abroad, and service-learning are intended to bring the concreteexperience into the learning model, providing students with a way to apply classroom conceptsand complete the learning process. This essay reviews the movement toward an expandedclassroom through experientially-based curricular innovations and provides an assessment of itsfaithfulness at this point in its development to those upon whose ideas it is based.
Keywords: experiential education, communication curriculum, expanded class-room, cooperative education, service learning, study abroad, internships
Consider the following situation: Two students, both communication majors, arrivefor the first day of your public speaking course at the beginning of the Fall semester.They begin to talk about their experiences during the summer. Student A traveledabroad, spending her summer in South Africa. Student B studied at the University ofSheffield in Northern England as a part of the University's Study Abroad programand for which she/he received course credit. Both students are filled with memoriesof their time abroad, and as you listen to them, the question that arises in your mindis whether there is a difference between these two students' experiences.
Consider another scenario: One of your majors has volunteered at a localhomeless shelter where, every weekend, she ladles food to homeless persons in thearea. She works side-by-side with another student from your department who isworking at the homeless shelter as a part of a service-learning component in yourcurriculum for which she is receiving academic credit. The question arises in yourmind whether there is an inherent difference between the experiences of these twostudents.
A final comparison: Two students are taking your senior seminar in communica-tion, the department's "capstone" course. One requirement in the course is that eachstudent produce a paper which applies a theory of communication to the "realworld." One student decides to write about a part-time job he had in the eveningsduring his junior year working at a local television station assisting the director onthe evening news program. The second student decides to write about an "intern-ship" she had at another local television station for which she received academiccredit, doing research for its evening news magazine program. You wonder whetherone or the other of the students will find the paper harder to write.
It is in determining whether one student's experience is essentially different fromthe other's in situations such as tiiese that one confronts the value of one of the mostsignificant trends in higher education during the past three decades: experiential
Richard A. Katula (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1974) is Chair and Professor, Department of Communica-tion Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115. Elizabeth Threnhauser (Ph.D., NorthwesternUniversity, 1991) is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies, Northeastern University.
COMMUNICATION EDUCATION, Volume 48,July 1999
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education. Today, almost every college and university in the country has an array ofprograms that may be categorized under the heading of the "expanded classroom."Programs such as service-learning, internships, cooperative education, and studyabroad are presented in the literature of most colleges and universities as inherentlyenriching to the student's education. But are they? Did the student who studiedabroad under the university's sponsorship have an inherently richer experience thanthe student who simply traveled abroad-or for that matter a student who recentlyfinished reading Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy? Did the student who worked at thehomeless shelter under the auspices of a service-learning requirement have aninherently deeper learning experience than the student who just volunteered—or astudent who just finished a term paper on poverty in the inner city? And other thanarranging the experience-working as a sort of employment or travel agency-whatdid the university bring to the student's experience such that it became an "educa-tional" experience rather than simply an "experience?" And, perhaps most impor-tantly, what did the institution or the faculty do to integrate the students' experiencesinto concepts introduced in the classroom? Difficult questions such as these go to theheart of a movement in higher education that has changed the very nature ofeducation itself, a movement that has forced educators to confront their own beliefsabout what it means to be an educated person.
The classroom is often thought of as a barren place, far removed from the moreimmediate and relevant concerns of students. How many of us can remember theold rhyme,
Latin's a dead language, dead as it can be.First it killed the Romans, and now it's killing me,
as an expression of our exasperation at the seeming uselessness of parsing nouns andconjugating verbs in a language that no one even speaks? And it has been said ofphilosophers (and philosophy professors) since Socrates that when a person points afinger at reality the philosopher wants to study the person's finger. Even in our ownfield of communication, there is no denying the obvious trend toward the productionand telecommunication side of the curriculum and away from the study of rhetoricaltheory often because students see these former pursuits as project- and skills-basedrather than as simply conceptual. Experiential education programs have emerged tobreathe life into this supposedly jejune environment, and in so attempting they havechanged higher education-for better or for worse. In the essay that follows, we tracethe development of a movement known as the "expanded classroom," reviewing itsroots, its growth and development, its variant forms, and its successes and failures.The essay concludes with an evaluation of this trend and a cautionary note about itsplace in higher learning.
Definitions and BackgroundAccording to the National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE), an organiza-tion founded in 1971, experiential education is an educational philosophy basedupon the primacy of experience in the learning process. "In its purest form," theNSEE Foundations Documents Committee notes, "experiential education is induc-tive, beginning with 'raw' experience that is processed through an intentionallearning format and transformed into working, useable knowledge" (1998, p. 3). Thefocus of this definition is on reflection, or making meaning out of experiences; that is,
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determining which are valuable, distilling from those the intellectual or moralmeaning and integrating those meanings into abstract ideas and theories that canserve as a compass for future problem-solving and decision-making. "This cycle ofexperience and reflection," then, "grounds all forms of Experiential Education"(National Society for Experiential Education [NSEE], 1998, p. 5).
Within the context of a university and as a part of its efforts at "expanding theclassroom" experiential education is defined in similar terms but usually with theadditional connection to the classroom and the curriculum as in the followingexample:
Experiential education is that learning process and accomplishment that takes place beyond thetraditional classroom and that enhances the personal and intellectual growth of the student. Sucheducation can occur in a wide variety of settings, but it usually takes on a "learn-by-doing" aspect thatengages the student directly in the subject, work, or service involved. It may or may not be tied to aspecific discipline, but it typically calls upon a student to integrate many of the qualities of a liberal artseducation such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, communication skills, andcitizenship. (Northeastern University, 1997, p. 1)
In its briefest terms, then, experiential education seeks to make "knowledge" into"know-how."
Experiential education comes in many forms including internships, study abroad,cooperative education, service-learning, and field experiences such as intercollegiatedebating or archaeological sitework. Experiential education is usually a voluntarypart of the curriculum, although for some programs and some colleges (as we willsee) it can be a mandatory, credit-bearing course of study. Experiential education is aphenomenon common to traditional and non-traditional students and to communitycolleges, colleges, and universities in equal proportion. In 1987, Ernest Boyer notedin his influential book, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America, that learninghad moved beyond the campus to the home, the workplace, and the world around.His study of education in America moved him to proclaim that,
The trend is clear. In just a generation, assumptions about time and location of learning thathistorically have guided undergraduate education have been turned on end. Undergraduateeducation is beginning to break loose from traditional classroom encounters and even from thenotion that all learning must be completed under the formal guidance of a teacher. The nation'scolleges are discovering that the campus is as much a state of mind as a place. It exists, or at least canexist, wherever a student happens to be. (Boyer, 1987, p. 232)
Philosopher John Dewey is usually credited with conceiving of the idea ofexperiential education. Dewey was concerned that students were sitting in class-rooms being droned at and drilled by teachers who knew very little about howyoung people actually learn. Dewey saw that students, because of their age andbackground (often impoverished and immigrant), had an insufficient stock ofexperiences to which to apply their grammar, spelling, and reading lessons. Heobserved that most students could not hold onto the abstractions visited upon themin the classroom because they could not connect them to anything "real" in theirown lives. He sought to change the way knowledge was transmitted to students sothat they might become actively engaged in its acquisition themselves rather thanbeing passive vessels into which it was poured.
Dewey urged that education in the classroom be focused on helping studentsmake sense out of their experiences. He called for a pragmatic education, one that
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linked knowing to doing. The role of the teacher went beyond preparing lessons tostructuring experiences that actively engaged the child in developing practical,useable knowledge. "I take it," Dewey (1938) wrote, "that the fundamental unity ofthe newer philosophy is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessaryrelation between the processes of actual experience and education" (p. 7).
Dewey (1927) was also concerned that students become active participants inAmerican democracy, and that by participating in it to continually transform itrather than be eclipsed by its rapid technological growth. As Robert Westbrookexplains, Dewey believed that,
democracy as an ethical ideal calls upon men and women to build communities in which thenecessary opportunities and resources are available for every individual to fully realize his or herparticular capabilities and power through participation in political, social, and cultural life.(Saltmarsh, 1992, p. 7)
For the purpose of training these citizens, Dewey believed that education must begrounded in experience.
Fur* ^re, Dewey was concerned that schools produce workers who wouldparticipa and have control over the methods of production in Americancapitalist ty rather than be held captive by them. Public education, for Dewey,was not I aded to produce mindless workers for the nation's factories and mills;rather, the purpose of education was to produce workers who would activelycontribute to the methods of production in which they participated and who,through this democratic workplace, would achieve self-realization themselves aswell as profits for the captains of American industry. Dewey opposed the vocationaleducation movement on these grounds, arguing that education should be as farremoved from industry and business as possible rather than in symbiotic relation-ship to it. Experience, for Dewey, meant much more than simply experiencing work.
Finally, Dewey believed that while experience gave life to principles presented ina classroom, he also believed that principles gave structure and meaning to experi-ences, that, in fact, there was an educational relationship between the classroom andthe world outside it. Dewey placed an emphasis on learning as a dialectical process,integrating experience and concepts, observations and action, learning and beingtaught. "To imposition from above," Dewey writes,
is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity;to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills andtechniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vitalappeal. (1938, p. 5)
Dewey emphasized also that the quality of the experience is as important as theexperience itself. Experiences must be both enjoyable and creative. Teachers werecharged by Dewey (1938) with creating experiences for students that were agreeableand that would prepare them for future problem-solving and decision-making. Thus,it was not simply experience, but rich and structured experiences, to which studentswere to be exposed, and upon which they would reflect and learn.
Dewey's "Theory of Experience" has served as the foundation for an extraordi-nary body of work in educational psychology connecting experience to intellectualgrowth. In the 1940s, for instance, Kurt Lewin argued that "there is nothing sopractical as a good theory," so long as the person or organization set goals, theorizedabout prior experience, experimented with the theory in real work settings, and
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revised the theory based'upon that experience (NSEE Foundations DocumentsCommittee, 1998, p. 4). Since that time, influential thinkers such as Jean Piaget,Paulo Friere, William Perry, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan have advancedthe notion that cognitive and moral development are a product of how we makemeaning out of our experiences in the everyday world around us. Perhaps the mostinfluential thinker on the topic since Dewey, however, is cognitive psychologistDavid Kolb.
In his book, Experiential Learning, Kolb (1984) argues that "learning is the processwhereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience" (p. 38).For Kolb, learning takes place in a four-stage cycle of behaviors involving fouradaptive learning modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract con-ceptualization, and active experimentation. Concrete experience is opposed toabstract conceptualization (as with Dewey), while active experimentation is opposedto reflective observation. It is the dialectical tension imposed by these four types ofbehavior and how that tension is resolved that leads to learning. Knowledge, forKolb, results from the combination of grasping experience (concrete and experimen-tal) and transforming it (conceptualization and reflection). Most importantly for thisessay is the primacy of experience in the learning process. Whereas for Dewey,learning was reinforced by experience; for Kolb, learning actually begins withexperience.
While Dewey was concerned with training citizens and workers for Americandemocracy, Kolb's work is aimed at expanding Dewey's thinking for purposes ofshaping the curriculum in higher education. Kolb's objective is to change theeducational environment in this country to meet the needs of the new populationsentering higher education: non-traditional students, minorities, and the poor, whoseconcrete experiences and socialization have not prepared them for traditionaltextbook approaches to learning. Kolb also acknowledges the need to link educationto the workplace, to respond to graduates and employers who have becomeincreasingly concerned with the gap between necessary job skills and educationalinstruction. Finally, Kolb's work is intended to increase the linkage between learningin the classroom and assessment of that learning through competency testing. Theseconcerns, Kolb argues, are all addressed with a curriculum based upon experientiallearning since it is the only model of learning that allows for the development of acommunity-based body of knowledge to be construed from the multiplicity ofexperiences brought into the contemporary classroom.
Other political and educational forces have moved the experiential educationagenda to the forefront of issues in higher education. The presidency of John F.Kennedy brought with it an expansive view of education, one that sought to train"citizens of the world," who could work in the world through venues such as thePeace Corps and VISTA. In addition, the Cold War and the end of the Cold Warhave both provided the impetus for American education to reach out to othercultures and to provide students with experiences of other cultures and places.Institutions of higher education responded to this call with study abroad programsand with loan-forgiveness programs for Peace Corps work or for teaching inoppressed urban areas.
In recent years, national education associations have embraced the goals ofexperiential education. For instance, at its 1995 national conference, "The EngagedCampus: Organizing to Serve Society's Needs," the American Association of Higher
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Education (AAHE) focused on four themes for connecting the campus to the localcommunity and the larger society, one of which was "Outreach to the LocalCommunity." As Helen "Lena" Astin, Chair of the AAHE's Board of Directors putit,
I'm concerned about public criticism of our institutions. But I believe that the current focus-bynational and state leaders, regulatory agencies, governing boards-on issues of quality, accountability,and productivity is their way of asking higher education, "Are you still with us?" Underlying theircriticisms is a pretty distinct message, a calling from our constituents to connect our research,teaching, and service to the needs of the communities and society at large. (Albert, 1995, p. 10)
Astin makes clear that the current trend in experiential education is driven insignificant measure by public demand for accountability, often in the form ofassessment mandates for higher education. As Graham, Bourland-Davis, and Ful-mer (1997) note, 40 states have some kind of outcomes assessment mandate, andlurking in the background of these accountability mandates are omnipresent threatsof budgetary cutbacks and program reductions.
In response to such pressures, the nation's colleges and universities have donnedthe mantle of experiential learning. Experiential education programs are presentedas a way of enriching the curriculum, of infusing into it a more practical learningmodel for students. Simultaneously, experiential education programs are promotedoutside the academy as its response to calls for accountability by constituencies suchas governing boards, legislative bodies, the corporate sector, parents and students.
Today, the National Society for Experiential Education promotes experientialeducation and supports the hundreds of schools that have experiential educationprograms. Most importantly for this essay, the NSEE has established a set ofprinciples which it calls "principles of good practice" (NSEE Foundations Docu-ments Committee, 1998, pp. 7-10) as a guide to facilitating experiential education'sgoal of integrating the classroom and the out-of-classroom experience. Thoseprinciples are Intention, Authenticity, Planning, Clarity, Training and Mentoring,Monitoring and Assessment, Continuous Improvement, Reflection, Evaluation, andAcknowledgment.1 It is the application of these principles to an experientialeducation program that give it the quality that Dewey and Kolb emphasized asnecessary to learning. The NSEE sees as its job helping faculty members understandthe principles and apply them to the curriculum.
It is from these theoretical, sociological, and political roots that programs inexperiential education have sprung, and from agencies such as the NSEE that theyhave been nurtured. It is often in the translation of these well-intentioned programs,however, that gaps appear between the theory and the practice of experientialeducation. Just as Dewey believed that not just any experience was valuable, so it isthat not all experiential education programs are valuable experiences in the strictsense of their being connected to student learning. In the following section of theessay we detail four types of experiential education programs, representing aspectrum of ways that the theory of experiential education has been put intopractice. The purpose of this review is to examine whether the theory of experientialeducation is actually operative in experiential education programs.
Cooperative EducationBy far the most intensive and programmatic approach to the expanded classroom isCooperative Education. Started in 1906 at the University of Cincinnati by Herbert
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Schneider, cooperative education is "designed to strengthen classroom learning withperiods of study-related employment" (Cooperative Education Association, 1997, p.3). Cooperative education is practiced in over 800 colleges and universities all overthe world, but predominantly in the United States. Approximately 200 communica-tion departments participate in cooperative education programs (Elmore, Held,Craig, & Cannon, 1997). According to the Cooperative Education Association andtrue to Schneider's philosophy of education, its mission is to link work and learning.The Cooperative Education Association believes that "students, employers, andeducational institutions benefit from effective school-to-work programs" (Coopera-tive Education Association, 1997, p. 4). Further, the Cooperative Education Associa-tion believes that "work can be enhanced by educational complements" and that"efforts in work-integrated learning constitute an investment in our students that willresult in long-term benefits" (Cooperative Education Association, 1997, p. 4).
Cooperative education is often intertwined or confused with an internship pro-gram, and at some institutions the two are essentially the same. There are, however,colleges and universities that have cooperative education programs as a fullyintegrated part of the curriculum. A cooperative education program taken at acooperative education institution, the kind discussed here, involves a contractualarrangement between the university and an outside agency, often including clausesrelated to salary, work conditions, and other ancillaries. A co-op program usuallybegins with interview and resume building workshops taken during the student's firstyear. The actual co-op work program begins during a student's sophomore year andafter the student has had a core of courses in her or his major. Typically, co-opstudents interview with a number of organizations that have co-op agreements withthe institution, although at some co-op institutions students can work at jobs theyhave found themselves if the job is approved by the student's co-op advisor. Studentsmust be hired prior to working. If the student is hired, he or she will work full-time atthe agency and while on co-op the student will not attend class. Students workbetween three and seven quarters during their undergraduate education, alternatingquarters between work and the classroom and thus increasing the undergraduateprogram to five years. Some students will complete their "co-ops" at one agencywhile others will do "co-ops" at two or three different places of employment. Theremay or may not be a formal "debriefing" between co-op experiences and the returnto the classroom, and "reflection" on the work experience may be done in a separatesetting or it may be left to classroom instructors to "integrate" the experience of workinto their courses.
A Cooperative Education Office, often with a full-time corps of faculty and staffpersonnel, helps the student throughout the years she or he is in the program. Largeco-op employers such as the Disney Corporation in Orlando, Florida, may have asmany as four or five hundred co-op students working on site at one time, all needingsupervision. Large departments, such as is often the case in communication depart-ments, may have 150 to 200 students on "co-op" every quarter or semester. Aprofessional Co-op Office is therefore needed to monitor student progress during theco-op experience and manage difficult situations such as charges of sexual harass-ment or firings. Usually, the university provides the student with his or her medicalinsurance and if the co-op job is nearby, the student will often reside in his or herregular housing. The guiding principle of co-op is that by alternating work andclassroom experiences, the student will begin to integrate them and learn more.
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What makes a cooperative education program work? John Saltmarsh (1992)captures the essence of cooperative education best, noting that
Education at co-op institutions will have to encompass two overarching goals: (1) integration ofclassroom and workplace learning; and (2) education that will provide students with the tools totransform the workplace into an environment that fosters complete self-realization. Co-op in the classwill also have to count toward the ultimate educational value of the work experience. Simply learningat work will not be enough. Students need to be educated about what produces the quality of workand what it takes to improve that quality. Students will need to be provided with an understanding ofthe cultural, social, economic, and political barriers that limit direct participation in the control of thework they are and will be engaged in. They should be taught the theoretical underpinnings as well asthe cultural and social consequences of free-market capitalism. They should be equipped toparticipate in dealing with issues they will encounter as working adults-power relations inorganizations, job discrimination, leadership and management styles, pay equity, family leave policy,profit sharing, among others. The curriculum for co-op students should include history, sociology,psychology, economics, law and political science courses that focus on workplace issues, (p. 9)
Whether the ideal marriage of work and classroom experience actually occursthrough cooperative education is a question with unclear answers. There is mixedevidence that cooperative education enhances student learning when co-op studentsare compared with regular students. The data are sketchy and often based onanecdotal rather than empirical evidence. For instance, in a recent essay concerninga mandatory cooperative education program for Women's Studies majors at An-tioch College, despite a glowing account by one student of her experience workingin a women's homeless shelter, the author notes that there is no empirical evidenceto support the learning goals of the program, and, she adds, "to my knowledge therehas not been research directed at female development outcomes" (Egart, 1994, p.51). A 1993 study titled, "Assessing the Value of Cooperative Education," doesindicate that for the variable, "tacit knowledge," defined synonymously as "practicalintelligence," "learning the ropes," "learning what goes without saying," etc., twopositive outcomes resulted from the cooperative education experience: (1) co-opstudents displayed more practical job knowledge than non-co-op students, and (2)co-op students displayed more general "tacit knowledge" than non-co-op students(Williams, 1993). Even in this kind of research, the question remains whether theco-op students' experience animated what they learned in the classroom—or anymore so than did the experiences of non-co-op students. That question was notasked. Thus, while cooperative education programs have the clear advantage ofproviding students with a job "tryout" during their college years, and while it is clearthat students have a clearer sense of the world of work as a result of their co-opexperiences, it is not clear whether the original Deweyan or Kolbian ideal ofexperience animating principles and vice-versa is activated and realized.
Some universities, recognizing the lack of integration between cooperative educa-tion experiences and the classroom, have begun to work toward educational modelsthat will foster this integration. For instance, at Northeastern University, the largestcooperative education university, a model is being developed to maximize theeducational value of both classroom and work experience. Known as the "Two-WayStreet" model, the program seeks to identify disciplinary perspectives on work as away of helping faculty members bring work experiences into the classroom. TheDepartment of Philosophy, for example, has identified some general philosophicalissues about work, knowledge in the workplace, and ethics in the workplace, forprofessors in this department to discuss in their classrooms. Whether the average
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faculty member, however, desires to or is capable of designing his or her syllabus tointegrate co-op with the classroom is questionable. And whether faculty membersintegrate the "Principles of Best Practice" espoused by the NSEE, and even whetherthey can be trained to do so, remains an issue. The cooperative education version ofexperiential education has much potential, but today it probably exists more as avocational program rather than as a way of integrating concrete experience in theworkplace with abstract conceptualization in the classroom. In this latter reality,John Dewey would not be pleased.
Study AbroadA second form of experiential education is Study Abroad. Of course, Americanshave been studying abroad for centuries, and during the early days of highereducation in America it was de rigeur that the educated person travel abroad tocomplete her or his education: Paris to study art, England to study literature,Germany to study philosophy, and the like. Edward Everett, America's first Ph.D.,discovered ancient Greece during his doctoral studies at Gottingen University, andwith the images of Marathon and Athens burning brightly in his mind, he returnedto America to become one of the seminal movers of the Greek Revival Period in art,politics, architecture, and oratory. There is, then, a long tradition of study abroad inAmerican higher education.
For much of the 20th century, many colleges and universities have had requiredstudy abroad programs. Kalamazoo College and DePauw University, for instance,are notable for their "third-year" study abroad programs. Today, study abroad ismandatory for only a small number of programs or majors at some schools. Forinstance, at Middelbury College, the University of Mississippi, the University of thePacific, Marquette University,. Murray State University, and a host of others, allmajors in International Studies (and variants thereof) must study abroad for at leastone semester. At Connecticut College, all humanities majors must have an experi-ence in study abroad. Based upon a query we made through the Institute ofInternational Education web site, we did not learn of any communication programthat requires study abroad. In the past two decades, Study Abroad programs havebecome much more institutionalized with formal contracts being signed betweenuniversities in America and the rest of the world, making study abroad much easier.Thus, in the past decade, study abroad has grown remarkably. This past year close to90,000 American students traveled abroad, mostly to Europe-67% (Desruisseaux,1998), a figure close to double the number who studied abroad in 1980 (Boyer,1987).
Study abroad is considered to be different from simply travel abroad. Studyabroad involves taking courses for credit at an accredited institution as the center-piece of the experience. While studying abroad, students often are introduced to thehost country through side trips and through their own adventurousness. Thequestion has not been raised so far as we can determine whether study abroad is aninherently "enriching" experience in the sense in which Dewey meant the term.There is an almost unquestioned assumption that study abroad is good despite thefact that there is no assurance that students will immerse themselves in the hostculture, use its currency (rather than credit cards, for instance), learn its language (itis notable that the United Kingdom is the most popular country for study abroadwith more than double the number of students than the next most popular country,
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Italy), associate in any meaningful way with citizens of the host culture, or engage inany thoughtful way in the culture other than as a consumer of it.
A further question that has arisen with study abroad programs concerns how theexperience becomes a part of the student's "experiential education." What connectsthe study abroad to the classroom? How does the student "reflect" upon theexperience? In some programs, students are asked to keep a journal. In otherprograms, students are asked to keep a journal of at least 250 words per week whichbecomes the source for a "reflections" seminar taken upon return to school. Duringthis seminar, students are asked to integrate their study abroad experience into theirclassroom curriculum-the concrete experience to abstract conceptualization phaseof learning. There is little empirical evidence that we have been able to locate,however, that suggests that the study abroad experience has in any appreciable wayanimated the study of concepts. At least, there are no comparison data to show that auniversity-sponsored study abroad program leads to heightened learning any morethan would, for instance, a personal trip abroad. Aside from the obvious advantageof having an office structure the experience and manage credit transfer, travel, andhousing, there are no data available to support the "experiential learning" modeladvanced by Kolb.
Internship ProgramsPerhaps the most familiar form of experiential education is the internship, a programthat became popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s and which today thrives inalmost every college and university. Elmore et al. (1997) report that over 500Communication departments offer internship programs. Internships are prevalent incommunication departments because, as Sellnow and Oster (1997) point out "intern-ship experiences offer communication majors a juncture for connecting theoreticalknowledge with life experiences" and "are considered a primary means of enhanc-ing a student's employability" (p. 191).
Adopting its name from medical school terminology, an internship, simply put, isfield experience (National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administra-tion, [NASPAA], 1977). According to the National Society for Experiential Educa-tion (1998), an internship is "any carefully monitored work or service experience inwhich an individual has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what sheor he is learning throughout the experience" (p. 1). What distinguishes an internshipfrom other work experience or community service "is the intentional 'learningagenda' " the student brings to her or his work (NSEE, 1998, p. 1).
The purpose of an internship is twofold: to offer students an understanding oforganizational structures and protocol within a professional working environmentand, to provide students an opportunity for professional development. To besuccessful, internship programs require "careful structures on the home campus andat the site of practical experience" (Ryan & Cassidy, 1996, p. 5), within which boththe employer and the academic advisor supervise the student throughout theinternship. Within the university or college, trained faculty guide students throughthe placement process, through the selection of learning objectives integratingtheory and practice, and through the assessment of the students' progress during andafter the internship. Ideally, such programs occur in seminars where students aregiven the opportunity to reflect upon their experience through weekly reading and
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writing assignments that connect the internships with their learning goals (Ryan &Cassidy, 1996). As Regina Grantz and Marilyn Thanos (1996) write,
The seminar also allows students to meet with other interns to discuss their experiences before,during, and after placement. At the work site, students work with a "site mentor" who helps her orhim in determining work goals throughout the internship. The mentor then evaluates the student andoffers feedback based upon these objectives and on the student's overall work habits and professionalbehavior, (p. 27)
The seminar, then, becomes the junction at which theory and practice meet.Internship programs often work quite effectively as a learning tool. Grantz and
Thanos (1996) note, for instance, that when guided through the internship processfrom start to finish, from advising, placement, and monitoring student progress,internships provide students with the following: a chance to connect course work toprofessional work experience, a concrete understanding of organizational structures,and the opportunity to assume responsibility for his or her intellectual and profes-sional development. Successful programs are those that adhere to the Principles ofGood Practice and that are regularly evaluated by faculty, students themselves, andsite supervisors. For instance, the internship program in the Department of Commu-nication at Westfield State College in Massachusetts includes an Internship Hand-book (1998) that provides reflections exercises, mid-semester evaluations, and a finalreporting format that maximizes the learning potential and connects the workexperience to the classroom.
Problems occur, however, when programs are poorly or haphazardly adminis-tered. Students, employers, and universities alike have voiced criticism of suchinternship programs. For instance, students frequently complain that diey are placedin clerical positions, receiving little supervision from eidier faculty or an on-sitecoordinator and consequently learning little from their experience. Employers'grievances tend to consist of interns' lack of preparation, training, and motivation.Among university grievances, two of the most frequent are that "internships are notintegrated into the academic curriculum" and that "internships are chiefly seen as ameans of employee recruitment" (NASPAA, 1977, p. 1).
The causes for such criticism can be found in a uniform lack of standards forinternship programs (NASPAA, 1977). Another problem, as Mary Ryan and JohnCassidy (1996) note, is that "faculty are rarely informed about quality experientialeducation" (p. 4). They continue:
Rarely, if ever . . . do institutions fully integrate experiential education into their Curricula. Evenamong those that do, few have standards for what is and is not an acceptable experiential program. Inthe college or university that does have an experiential program, it is frequently the brainchild of onefaculty member who wants, for example, to send political science students to Washington, D.C. . . .Credit and academic worthiness are often left to the discretion of individual departments. (Ryan &Cassidy, 1996, p. 4)
An internship which serves as a form of experiential education must be more thansimply "work for credits." An internship program must be integrated into thecurriculum by trained faculty, and it must adhere to the learning principles uponwhich its inherent legitimacy is based. When properly developed and instituted, aninternship program can become a useful learning tool in the undergraduate curricu-lum.
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Service LearningPerhaps the most widely practiced form of experiential education is service learning,or community service performed through the university setting. The NSEE (1998)defines service learning as "any carefully monitored service experience in which astudent has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what he or she islearning throughout the experience" (p. 1). Niagara University (1998), a majorproponent of service-learning, defines the program as:
a method through which citizenship, academic subjects, skills and values are taught.. . [providing]students with experiences to test theories acquired in the classroom and to concretize abstractthought. Students develop research, critical thinking and interpersonal skills. They come toappreciate the larger social, ethical and environmental implications of knowledge. Service-learningcan enrich content areas by fostering social responsibility, intellectual and ethical reasoning, (p. 1)
Sellnow and Oster (1997) report that over 700 colleges and universities haveformal service programs. In their 1995 survey of 358 Communication Departments,Sellnow and Oster (1997) found that 240 of the 263 schools which responded offeredacademic credit for service learning. Sherwyn Morreale and David Droge (1998)support service-learning programs in communication departments, citing the empha-sis on civic education in our discipline which ties service-learning "to the communi-cation field's tradition of preparing students for public deliberation and a role inpubliclife"(p.6).
Ira Harkavay (1996), critic and practitioner of service learning at the University ofPennsylvania, traces the tradition of service learning to the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries at John Hopkins University, Columbia University, the Univer-sity of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. Harkavay (1996) writes,
For the founders [of the modern American urban university] the mission of the university was tocreate a better city and society through advancing and transmitting knowledge. Even with itslimitations, their model was essentially one of strategic academically-based community service,integrating research, teaching, and service and attempting to make fundamental improvements in thelives of people and their communities, (p. 23)
Despite the success of these institutions in creating mutually beneficial relationshipsbetween the university and their urban environment, these programs (with theexception of the University of Chicago) were put on hiatus with the onset of WorldWar I (Harkavay, 1996). Harkavay (1996) writes, "The brutality and horror of thatconflict ended the buoyant optimism and faith in human progress and societalimprovement that marked the progressive era . . . . Scholarly inquiry directed towardcreating a better society was increasingly deemed inappropriate" (p. 13).
Service learning, as we understand it today, was reawakened in 1961 throughPresident Kennedy's now legendary call to action in his inaugural address: "Ask notwhat your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." JudithBerson (1995a), a strong advocate of service learning at Broward CommunityCollege, notes that Kennedy's words were "a call-to-civic-arms that spurred many ofthe nation's young to action" with such programs as the Peace Corps, VISTA, andother "grass-roots, community based service programs" (p. 1). The idealism of thisera is echoed in one of the most frequently noted benefits of service learning: thepersonal satisfaction of helping those in need.
Advocates of service learning describe a host of benefits ranging from heightened
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civic engagement to the Deweyan ideal of enhanced learning through the conver-gence of theory and practice to the strengthening of employment prospects. In hisarticle "Learning Civic Effectiveness," Robert McKenzie (1998) of the KetteringFoundation suggests that service learning has the potential to transform studentsfrom passive consumers of government to active participants. He writes:
In order for politics (defined as the responsibility of the polis, not just government) to work, citizensmust be actors. To act together, citizens must make choices. To make choices, citizens must engage indeliberative dialogue across diversity, not just within their own interest. (McKenzie, 1998, pp. 54-55)
Participation in public service enhances students' awareness of social problems,spurring them to seek immediate and long-term methods for alleviating humansuffering, thus fulfilling one "historic purpose of education... the cultivation of civicvirtue and effectiveness" (McKenzie, 1998, p. 55).
Equally important, when it follows the spirit of Dewey, service learning canenhance and deepen student understanding of course concepts. Gary Hesser (1995),in his study of service learning outcomes, reports that faculty who incorporateservice learning into courses find that this approach enables students to achieve thelearning outcomes they have established for their courses. As one faculty member inHesser's study states: "When I grade their exams and read their papers, I am seeing aquality and level of analysis that was not there before I introduced the fieldstudy/service-learning component" (Hesser, 1995, p. 36). Hesser (1995) is quick tonote, however,
that faculty who are most pleased with the learning outcomes also tend to be those who give carefulthought and planning to how the experiences can be planned, structured and integrated into thecourse. In other words, these outcomes do not "just happen." (p. 36)
Berson (1995a, 1995b) presents the additional argument that service learningenhances job applicants' marketability by exploring career options, developing theirresumes, providing work experience, and demonstrating participation in commu-nity service. For Berson (1995a), one primary benefit is practical: "Potential employ-ers have always valued on-the-job experience, often more than academic creden-tials. Employers are placing a high value on community service as well" (p. 4). And,"schools and potential employers are working together to reward student volun-teers" (Berson, 1995b, p. 5).
While such a benefit is undoubtedly favorable, it can all too easily turn servicelearning into a resume boosting activity, devoid of learning and undermining thespirit of volunteerism by reclassifying it as a quid pro quo arrangement rather than agiving of one's self without self-interest. Such a focus ignores two fundamentalphilosophical underpinnings of service learning: "the need to do for others" and theopportunity to acquire concrete understanding of theoretical concepts (G. Rabre-novic, personal communication,June 18, 1998).
Critics of service learning question the validity of a mandatory service learningrequirement. McKenzie (1998), for instance, writes that while few would "object toallowing students to perform voluntary service in their free time" many find such arequirement "inappropriate and unnecessary" (p. 56). Others worry about thedangers of political activism, fearing that direct student involvement in political lifehinders educational institutions from teaching subject matter in the classroom. Theyworry about the depth of intellectual quality in service-learning. Other critics argue
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that service-learning stresses therapeutic values at the expense of more fundamentalcivic skills (McKenzie, 1998).
Harkavay (1996) raises the concern that service learning as it is often practiced is afundamentally self-serving activity. He writes that such programs are often, "merelythe pedagogical equivalent of 'exploitative' community based research," producingarticles and dissertations while failing to improve the communities in which it ispracticed (Harkavay, 1996, p. 5). "Meanwhile, the poor have gotten poorer, andacademics have gotten tenure, promoted, and richer" (Harkavay, 1996, p. 6). InHarkavay's judgment, service learning has too often been largely concerned withadvancing the goals of students, faculty, and the university alike while ignoring theneeds of the community it purportedly seeks to serve. Were it to be a trulyprogressive experiential education program, Harkavay argues that service-learningprograms would have as their primary goal the long-term well-being of people in thecommunity, followed by the students' need for civic, moral and intellectual develop-ment, and the university's need for niche programming that enhances its identity inthe academic marketplace. Harkavay (1996) argues for "strategic academically-based community service, which has as its primary goal contributing to the well-being of people in the community both in the here and now and in the future" (p. 6).Such a program would be "service rooted in and intrinsically tied to teaching andresearch" whose aim would be
to bring about structural community improvements (e.g., effective public schools, neighborhoodeconomic development, strong community organizations) rather than simply to alleviate individualmisery, e.g., feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, tutoring the "slow learner" (Harkavay,1996, p. 6).
Not only is Harkavay's model more ethical and humane, it is intellectually moreconnected to the ideals of experiential education.2
Several examples of service learning projects in communication departmentswere noted in the November issue of Spectra (1998). Two in particular illustrateHarkavay's ideal of creating programs to bring about structural improvement intheir communities. In the first program, students in an argumentation and advocacycourse at Loyola University in Chicago developed "an issues brief for a proposal toteach ESL courses to Chinese immigrant workers in the local factories" (Morreale &Droge, 1998, p. 6). In the second program, students in a public relations seminar atLa Salle University developed a "public information campaign for the local Habitatfor Humanity chapter" (Morreale & Droge, 1998, p. 6). Such projects draw upon thetalents, skills and training of students to enhance their communities by providingservices that would normally be beyond the reach of such groups. These projectsimprove the communities they serve rather than using them for an understanding ofthe "Other" or to unearth new research sites.
An Assessment of Experiential Education in the UndergraduateCurriculum in Higher Education Today
Is the current trend toward an "expanded classroom" true to the spirit of Dewey'sideal, or any educational ideal? This is a question that remains open to debate. Thereis no denying the functional value of such programs for helping students see theworld or for helping them get a job when they graduate, and there is clearly anintuitive value to being able to apply abstract concepts to real situations. But for the
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seminal thinkers such as Dewey and Kolb, experience, whether in the workplace orin a social setting, is designed to transform the classroom from a place whereconcepts and values are taught in vacuo to a place where real life events and situationsanimate and inform the concepts and theories taught. This theoretical underpinningof experiential education programs seems often to have been lost in the rush, albeitwell-intentioned, to develop programs that meet the needs of a generation ofstudents who favor "doing" to "thinking."
A serious problem with some experiential education programs is that they requirethe university to become a partner to the corporate world, providing cheap labor forit and subordinating the educational needs of students to the needs of business andindustry. Dewey, Kolb, and Boyer were concerned with the quiet acquiescence ofhigher education to the corporate world, and they would surely be concerned bytoday's propinquitous economic relationship between the university and the corpo-rate sector (Boyer, 1987; Kolb, 1984; Saltmarsh, 1992), especially when students arethe coin of barter.
Experiential education can be a legitimate and valuable part of academic studyonly when the institution has in place a program for training faculty members toparticipate in it, and only when it is contextualized within the classroom by trainedfaculty members who facilitate student comprehension of the intellectual basis andmeaning of such experiences. In other words, only when faculty are properly trainedin the Principles of Best Practice, and when they understand how to help studentsanimate the classroom through experience, and, how to animate the experiencethrough the classroom, will experiential education programs reach their originalgoal of enhancing student learning. At the present time, experiential educationprograms that work are those that are supported by administrators who make acommitment to programs designed to facilitate faculty understanding of this newlearning model and where incentives are in place for faculty members to engage inthem. Otherwise, while experiential education programs may enhance studentlearning, it is too often a serendipitous outcome.
One of the chief criticisms of experiential education programs is that they do notmeet the Dewey standard of being "educative" experiences. What good is aninternship if the student stands at a copy machine all day and has no program ofreflection within the curriculum to process what he or she has learned in somesystematic way? Such a program is little more than credits for work. What good is anexperience studying abroad if a group of, for instance, 10 American students fromone university go to the host institution together, live in a separate wing of a dorm,spend their time together, take courses taught in English, and seldom leave thecampus? When there is no program to prevent such a situation, the students might aswell be at home. What good is a service-learning requirement that the student doesnot want to have, or that is focused less on solving community problems and moreon solving the university's marketing problems? The university may pride itself onbeing a part of the community because of its service learning requirement, but if thestudent is required to pay tuition to work at a homeless shelter and then returns to acampus where little or no formal reflection on that experience is had, who then hasreaped any value? Higher education has laudably sought to answer the classicalquestion of the undergraduate student: "What am I doing in this classroom?" It mustnow respond to a new question often asked by the undergraduate student: "What amI doing on this job?"
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Related to the above criticism of experiential education programs is the criticismthat faculty or staff members are seldom trained in the "best practices" format; thatis, faculty members who are supposed to be connecting the experience to theclassroom are not trained to do such facilitation. How many faculty members havebeen formally introduced to the principles of intention, authenticity, planning,clarity, orientation, training and mentoring, monitoring and assessment, reflection,continuous improvement, evaluation, and acknowledgment? How many of theseprinciples are consciously built into one's syllabus? How many students are leftsaying with Eliot's (1943) speaker from Four Quartets: "We had the experience, butmissed the meaning?" (p. 39).
With regard to the discipline of Communication, the experiential educationmovement presents quite a different challenge. For many communication majors,particularly those studying journalism, broadcasting, radio and television produc-tion, advertising, public relations, etc., the experiential component is to some extentbuilt into the curriculum itself; that is, there is an abundance of "doing." In fact,while many of the traditional disciplines in the Arts and Sciences could legitimatelybe accused of being theoretically rich (knowing), the field of communication hasbeen frequently accused of being too skills-based (doing) and theoretically weak.Indeed, it has been said that experiential education is all about doing and very littleabout knowing. For our field, the Deweyan ideal may have to be approached fromthe conceptual side as opposed to the experiential side.
It was not so many decades ago that students traveled less on their own or not atall. They often came to college from locales that had essentially circumscribed theirlives. In John Dewey's day, it would have been rare for a student to have ever beenon an airplane, visited a foreign land, or even understood the urban environmentthat was just developing. During the past few decades, however, it is rare that astudent has not traveled or worked or at least experienced the world vicariouslythrough film or television. A case could arguably be made that the problem todayhas reversed itself: that today it is a more difficult but important challenge to getstudents to stop all the "doing" and sit down and read a book. ExperientialEducation is known in more cynical circles as the "ADDing" of American educa-tion, a sort of curricular innovation designed to catch this generation's lust forlearning only by experiencing. Doing so simply stands Dewey on his head andshort-circuits Kolb's learning cycle at its halfway point.
These criticisms may seem a harsh judgment of the experiential educationmovement in higher education. They simply reflect, however, a studied opinion ofthis still inchoate movement. Perhaps such criticisms will spur empirical researchinto just what it is that students learn from college or university structured programs,and just how it might be that such programs can be strengthened and made intolegitimate learning experiences.
In addition, a review of the status of the "expanded classroom" movement mightlead us to the similarly difficult question: "What is happening to the perceived valueof classroom instruction as a result of experiential education programs?" We know,for instance, that when they are surveyed on any variable related to job success,employers always cite skills such as speaking, writing, and listening to be the mostimportant (Winsor, Curtis, & Stephens, 1997). Skills such as writing are developed inthe classroom through a writing process that includes the study of grammar,punctuation, sentence and paragraph writing, and generic structures of discourse, in
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addition, of course, to actually writing and revising essays. We must be careful as wemove through the romantic era of the experiential education movement that we notforget where much critical learning still remains in its essence: the classroom.
In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, it was noted of renownedpolitical scientist Leo Strauss, that he "rarely spoke in public, never joined anyorganizations, and took no active part in the messy work of politics" ("Hot Type,"1997, p. A15). And yet Strauss was one of the most influential political thinkers of hisday. No doubt, many of us were trained by illustrious graduate professors whorarely, if ever, experienced a world beyond the campus. And yet who among uswould complain that such luminaries were short on learning. Experiential learning isa wonderful ideal dreamed of by a wonderful philosopher. Its translation into thecurriculum of higher education remains a work in progress.
Notes1Briefly defined, those principles are Intention—specifying a learning goal for the experience; Authenticity-
recognizing through experience how knowledge gives the learner power to affect her/his world; Planning—learning thevalue of goal-setting prior to doing the activity; Clarity—establishing a contract that defines expectations, responsibili-ties, timelines, and projected outcomes for the experience; Orientation—assuring that the learner has been familiarizedwith the experience setting; Training and Mentoring—ongoing skills development; Monitoring and Assessment-ongoing discussions of the original learning goals during the activity; Continuous Improvement—feedback onself-assessment as measured against clear standards of learning behavior; Reflection—keeping a journal or daily log as arecord of one's experience or engaging in group discussion and focused conversations with the mentor to process theexperience; Evaluation—having some measure of success; and Acknowledgment—constructive and critical feedbackconcerning the learner's accomplishments (NSEE Foundations Documents Committee, 1998, pp. 7-10). A fullerdiscussion the principles of good practice can be found in the NSEE's "Foundations of Experiential Education."Readers can call the NSEE at (919) 787-3263 to request a copy.
2Three excellent articles on service learning are: Bringle and Hatcher (1996), Gordon (1998), and Williams andEiserman (1997). Bringle and Hatcher present an excellent administrative model for implementing service learningthroughout the university. Gorden's model is an excellent foundation for implementing service learning into theclassroom. William and Eiserman's article discusses two service learning programs in Costa Rica and Indonesia,inviting policy makers to reconsider university service, research and teaching.
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