Launching our commission

A summer hot-housing thinking, has helped us to launch a sector commission on experiential learning. Read more on the ways in which you can contribute and influence this work.

There is clear appetite across the sector to do things differently in experiential spaces. An impressive community has self-assembled in response to my original call to action, with clear willingness to collaborate push forward thinking and practice: with over 90 institutions involved, incorporating staff across all seniorities and functions

We’ve mobilised this energy through a number of ideation events, coalescing the principles for a cross sector ‘commission’. It will be based on four lines of enquiry, each focused on the kinds of spaces through which experiential learning is often facilitated:

• The work space will explore the work-integrated/employer-engaged milieu; the ways we can learn from, reframe and reposition ‘the placement’ in creative ways

• The civic space will examine the tensions and opportunities associated with engaging our students with communities and other socio-cultural contexts

• The international space will promote the opportunities that cross-cultural and global engagement can bring

• The disciplinary space will advance thinking in experiential learning as a driver of active engagement with subject knowledge, and the potentials of trans- and interdisciplinary working.

Each theme will is hosting a call for evidence and invitation to collaborate. We want the sector to self-identify examples of inspirational practice, and for individuals who want to hone our thinking to step forward. You can participate in this by clicking on the links in each of the bullets above (or through the community section of substack)

We will use these case studies, and the contribution of each special interest group to frame up the tensions and opportunities associated with doing experiential learning with impact and scale - hosting a series of roundtables and other discussion events to move thinking forward.

In doing so there are a number of interconnected ‘big themes’ we’d like to pull out:

• Pedagogies: how we effectively design learning and scaffold engagement to assure impact and promote inclusive benefits.

• Processes: how we ensure that university administration and regulation is appropriately adjusted to nurture (and not stymie) experiential learning

• Value: how we talk in more persuasive ways about the contributions of experiential learning across various priorities in ways that are relevant to university strategies, regulatory concerns and governmental priorities.

We seek to achieve position papers which distill cross-cutting thinking across each of these areas, in addition to ‘deep dives’ into the core themes.

Our commission will operate in a flexible and self-organising way. We will set pace and support with process, but leadership with be relatively ‘flat’ and emergent - drawing on the finer principles of communities of practice.

Each theme will host a launch, a series of roundtables and will coalesce its outputs over the next two years. As a point of focus, we will seek to organise a conference for Summer 2024 to surface interim findings and sustain ongoing collaboration.

So please do get involved! Its an approach we hope will accommodate the varying availability of folk to contribute - and which is openly demographic. Whatever your function or seniority, if you have something interesting to say (or something critical to ask) you are very, very welcome.