Dr Colin Beard

Colin is a Faculty Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Organisation & Management, Sheffield Hallam University. He is an expert practitioner in designing and facilitating experiential learning, completing a doctorate in this fiield and co-authoring a key text in the field ‘Beard, C. and Wilson, J. (2006) Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers, (2^nd Ed.) (London, Kogan Page)’. His expertise is recognised in a National Teaching Fellowship Awarded by the Higher Education Academy.Colin is working with SCEPTrE to help develop a more experiential higher education curriculum.

ABSTRACT: 

Just three steps? A simple practical technique for improving students’ understanding of ‘experiential knowing’

Colin Beard, National Teaching Fellow, Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University

Colin Beard stepsseminar.pdf

Working with the personal experiences (experiential knowing)  of both participants and facilitator this workshop explores the commonality of experienced events that can lead to the development of propositional knowing that in turn can develop a deeper understanding of professional skills development.

The workshop aims to show how simple techniques can be used to help students understand the relationship between three forms of knowing (propositional/theorising, experiential/face to face , and practical knowing/skill) so that students are better able to recognize and value their learning (experiential knowing) through the diverse experiences that life has to offer.

Educational principles for experiential knowing:

‘Higher’ education is about higher forms of knowing. However a hierarchical relationship exists between experiential knowing and propositional knowing: propositional knowing has a higher status. This might not be the best way to portray the continual oscillation between the inter-related ways of knowing and acting the world?

When dealing with professional skills development in say difficult situations or dealing with conflict, propositional knowing helps learners to be aware of and work with some of the common stages (in this case portrayed as four or five main stages). Similar stages are found for example in the essential steps to the development of assertiveness, or negotiating or in giving and receiving feedback or in personal relationship issues. A scenario involving a real customer experience will be related to participants. Participants will be invited to develop responding strategies. These strategies will then be compared for commonality and difference. The proposed responses will be reduced to a number of stages or sequences and these will be charted using cards, as the main steps that will be ultimately walked and talked about.

This experiential session uses spatial awareness and bodily kinaesthetic imprinting. The floor or a large desk space is used for the creation of a four or five step modelling from the general stages of dealing with difficult customer issues, as created out of ‘real’ personal experiential stories. Using kinaesthetic reinforcement the steps are also walked along, and simultaneously talked through, to embed the learning. The body is part of the remembering; it remembers the steps in a sequence in the space. This session also explores the central tenet of experiential learning i.e. learning by 'doing the real thing': this ‘real thing’ can be broken down into many sub elements of realness (e.g. the story, the real artefacts in a situation). These real things can all actively engage learners and ensure that propositional knowing and modelling is meaningful and comes ‘alive’. Self-generated indigenous modelling or theorising about professional ‘situations’ or experiences in this way is very useful for personal and professional development.

This workshop also has applications for PDP and reflection.

Handouts will be offered that detail these experiential strategies for teaching more complex subjects using similar approaches.

Invitation to experiment : Participants will be invited to share their experiential knowing through their experience of the conference through the conversational format of Twitter. This is an experiment: an attempt to test our ability to create a form of ‘propositional knowing’ about the conference experience, as heard or read through the multiple voices of many individual’s that uniquely engage with the conference event as it unfolds.  At hourly intervals short messages will be compiled into a twitter blog on the conference Wiki. To find out more visit Nicola Avery in Twitter Corner in the 01AC02 networking room.

Lets see what happens!

Key words: experiential knowing, twitter