siliconindia | | April 20199to cycle a couple of months ago and for some reason, she was always half pedalling and I kept telling her to do a full pedal and she just could not do it. One day suddenly, she called-out to me and when I saw her, she was actu-ally doing a full pedal. I was obviously overjoyed. How did she learn this? I am not too sure; but I have a strong feeling that David Kolb's experiential learning cycle had something to do with it. My daughter's brain consciously began to make sense of all the information available. She was constantly going through this process of doing, think-ing, concluding, adapting till one day she was able to do exactly that ­ full pedal. This continuous (Kolb's) cyclical process of experi-encing, reflecting, conceptualising and experimenting should be ingrained as much as possible into every cur-riculum. This approach should be reinforced by the use of technology, blended learning approaches, simulation, gaming, as well as the coveted case based approach to provide immersion, build reflection and enhance deci-sion-making capabilities. Notwithstanding the many ad-vantages of traditional teaching, research has shown that incorporating experiential learning in the pedagogy aug-ments overall learning. Experiential in-class activities enhance the quality of interactions between the students and the faculty, as the faculty no longer act as a `sage on the stage', but assume a supporting role of a facilitator or a `guide on the side', enabling the students to learn by themselves.Well-designed experiential learning environments contain pedagogical elements that help the student ex-plore, navigate, and comprehend more information about a dynamic system that cannot be obtained through the process of being passive listeners in class. Some ways in which a HEI can integrate this experiential approach into their learning delivery are given below:1. Creative visualisation of practice2. Role play & prototyping3. Collaboration & working in virtual teams4. Ethical leadership oriented social entrepreneurship initiatives5. Technology-based gamificationOf course, this transformation is not easy, especially when both faculty and the student have been programed for so many years to believe that the end objective is a good score in the examinations. It would thus require a major transformational change in thought and action at all levels within HEIs. Delving deeper into faculty-centric issues, one of the prime challenges is the creativity and ef-fort required by the faculty to constantly adopt new meth-ods of teaching and instruction. This requires pedagogical and content-related training at repeated intervals. Howev-er, a collaborative approach where faculties engage with each other, help each other out, supported by international & national experts who train them, makes the challenging task doable and interesting. Mandatory training programs would need to be conducted to sensitize and motivate the management educators towards trying new pedagogical initiatives, develop their own, and effectively implement them in their courses. A collaborative approach where faculties engage with each other, help each other out, supported by international & national experts who train them, makes the challenging task doable and interesting
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