Should You Include Experiential Learning (EL)?
With courses being primarily taught online in Fall 2020 and Winter 2021, most of the rich face-to-face experiential activities need redesigning. To determine whether you are ready to move an experiential learning opportunity online, start with a review of the course’s learning outcomes and then use the Considerations for Experiential Learning Online: A Checklist document to walk you through key considerations.
Project Based Examples
We have prepared a list of examples of industry or community experiential learning projects that can be conducted remotely to help you develop/create structured, project-based, remote EL ideas that may meet your course’s learning outcomes.
Risk Management
Students working remotely, particularly in the comfort of their own home, is usually low risk but there still may be risks to a successful remote or online experiential learning experience. Once you have decided to include an EL component in your course,
- review Safety and Accommodations for All Remote Experiential Learning
- and then review the appropriate document for your course:
You are strongly encouraged to contact the Insurance, Risk Management & FIPPA Officer before starting any new activity.
Reflection
A core component of all EL, whether face-to-face or online, is reflection. The Centre for Teaching and Learning's Reflection webpage provides useful resources to ensure meaningful reflection for an effective EL experience.
Preparing Your Students
Before you begin your course, learn a little about your students’ needs and direct them to help and support, if necessary. The Tech Check-in Example can be personalized for your course, either as a fillable document or as a Qualtrics survey. Review your students’ answers and share links to the appropriate resources in Help for Students. If you are teaching first year students, it may be helpful to direct students to IT's new Getting Started-Students page, as well.
Be sure to include the Minimum and Recommended Computing Requirements in the syllabus.
If students will be interacting directly with industry or community partners, there are more items to consider for student preparation. We’ve listed a few in Preparing Your Students to Work with a Remote Partner.
Need more resources?
Are you interested in further resources to help you take your EL online? Let us know what other resources would be valuable to you.