7/21/2018: Experiential Learning at SUU

Fresh back from the Experiential Learning Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona, Lynn is joined with Dean Patrick Clark, Associate Dean Jeb Branin, and faculty members Silvia Kozlovska and Anne Diekema to talk about what experiential learning is and how its put into practice at SUU.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everyone this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on to some new sounds and genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3pm or on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now welcome to this week's show here on Thunder 91.1.

[00:00:45] OK well welcome to the A.P.E.X Hour everybody. This is so exciting to be here. I have four super awesome people here. And it's summer at SUU and today our topic is experiential learning and we here at SUU are really embracing this concept of high impact learning experiential learning. And we actually had a conference just a couple of weeks back in Arizona where all my guest today attended. And so I thought we'd kind of do a debriefing on that and the things we learn and also just talk about this topic of experiential learning. And you know what it means to us at SUU and the kinds of things that we do with that. So it's kind of a roundtable discussion today so the first thing I'd love to do is just kind of go around and let everybody introduce themselves and just say what they do for Suu. Sylvia do you want to start sharing.

[00:01:43] So I'm Silvia Kozlovska and I teach in the American language and culture center here at SUU which is an ESL program for international students who are not quite ready with their language proficiency to enter the recycling program so we kind of step in and help them out with academic language and academic culture.

[00:02:03] Awesome. And you do so much experiential teaching I can't wait to get into that.

[00:02:07] Yes I'm excited about it.

[00:02:09] All right. Next.

[00:02:11] I'm Patrick Clark I'm the dean of the School of Integrative and engaged learning and we are the home to many of the fun and innovative programs at the university including the Edge program which is university graduation requirement that promotes experiential learning for students. Really excited to be here today. Lynn thank you.

[00:02:34] And also the home of A.P.E.X as well. And you are one of the main champions I think for experiential learning on campus kind of the captain of the ship in some ways.

[00:02:45] Well early on when the process began with our involvement on a formal steering committee to write a new academic roadmap for the division of academic affairs my job was to be part of the subcommittee that wrote a white paper that laid the foundation later for a lot of the work that's in place now. So yeah from the beginning I was sort of there and it's been fun this sort of Champney championed the work of other people who have sort of taken on the mantle and moved forward with it.

[00:03:20] Yeah I'm really excited to ask you how and maybe we'll get into this a little later how it has changed you know since this sort of germ stages you know the initial stages of trying to get this more prominent on campus to now where it's being and braced on it on a bigger level. So we'll get into that as well.

[00:03:40] Well thanks for inviting me welcome. So my name is and Anne Diekema and I'm one of the fabulous librarians. Well I'm not saying I'm fabulous but the librarians are my family. And I specifically work on instruction. And with that I work on the dreaded LM 1010 information literacy. But we're working on completely revamping it based on student feedback and I'm also a supportive role so I support all these other faculty members that do experiential learning and other things in their classrooms.

[00:04:16] And your perspective I think is going to be interesting because you've been an avid conference goer you've gone to a few different Experiential Learning Conferences. So I'm sort of curious to hear what your perspective of the national scene because you've probably had a little more exposure with different sessions and the way things are going in other parts of the nation.

[00:04:37] Yeah absolutely.

[00:04:39] All right. And one of my favorite people! Jeb if you'd like to introduce yourself to us and still writing the checks.

[00:04:51] OK. Jeb Branin I'm the associate dean of the school of integrated learning and the executive director of the experimental learning Leadership Institute. And I also teach a little bit in the theater department and do a study abroad program for that much study abroad is a type of experiential education experiential learning that's transformative gaffer's it is really lucky because I get to work directly with students and see the transformation in their lives through experiential education as well as work at the administrative level to talk to help to guide policies and procedures and approaches to experimental learning and education at the university.

[00:05:33] It seems like most of your instruction has had that experiential element and over a Y in your teaching and in a wide range of topics and disciplines and now with the semester study abroad and those kinds of things to you really get to sort of amass it all together.

[00:05:52] Yeah absolutely. Almost all of the academic disciplines have components be they major minor that are experiential in nature. Certainly you teach music. It is inherently experiential insofar as when you're doing studio work and you're working with students hands on experiences. But the kinds of spiritual education that we're talking about is outside the classroom types of experiences. Taking that education and finding transferable skills and applying them in ways that are really meaningful to students. I mean one thing we know about students over the last several years is they really want to understand relevancy of what it is they're doing and why they're doing it and how it's going to apply to their lives that relevancy becomes more obvious through experiential education experience learning because they are taking the skills and they are often having to find ways to take skills that they've learned theoretically and apply them in ways that are very different than they had ever imagined to projects and opportunities and part in the use the word experiences that are outside the classroom and it really for a lot of students helps crystallize the relevancy of a traditional higher education as well as how important experiential education.

[00:07:20] Well that's kind of a great segue to what I want to talk about next which is how do we define experiential learning. We are sort of used to defining it speaking about it. It's some it's language we're familiar with now. But let's say somebody is listening to the show or let's say there's a faculty member who doesn't really know or even just somebody you're trying to say hey this is what I do. How would you define it. Does anybody have any thoughts. I mean Jeb just kind of gave us a nice sort of broad thing but how would you define experiential learning to somebody who doesn't know anybody want to jump in.

[00:08:05] I'll make a comment on that. You know it's funny that nationally there's still a debate about the definition of experiential learning some forms of experiential learning for example there's what we call active learning. There is project based learning. There's a variety of internships there's a variety of different ways that students engage in an experience. But there's one common thread that tends to define when experiential learning is happening and that is guided reflection. That's when the learning occurs. So when people go out and participate in active learning exercises what they need to be able to do is step away from the experience in an environment that encourages them to think and ponder and and analyze what the experience did for them how it helped them what they would do differently how it fuels their own imagination moving forward and that's where learning occurs. And so early on when we were sort of proposing what later became the age program there was this debate even on campus about about what constituted experiential learning. And it really the the point that we were trying trying to drive forward is that it's longitudinal it's process oriented. It's not something that occurs because somebody shows up and does something it doesn't. There's a developmental process involved but ultimately in the experience that has to be this ability to reflect and think about what they did and articulate how it helped them grow as an individual how I helped change there or change how I helps guide their own thinking about the work that they do and how what they did will influence what they will do next. So there's a variety of different ways to look at that. But there is really no universal standard definition. The industry can agree upon. There are different forms of experiential learning but again woven throughout this process is this this notion of reflection and that's really where the learning takes place.

[00:10:24] Great. Thank you so much for that. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to add.

[00:10:29] Well one of the questions then becomes so you know if if the norm nationally can't define it then how do we operationalize it. Right. And we've worked very closely and Southern Utah University has become what is known as a strategic partner with the National Society of experiential education and as opposed to trying to provide one size fits all definition the necessary experiential education or and he provides eight principles of best practice. And these eight principles can be applied to a variety of types of experiential education. And if that experiential education includes each of these eight components then you can be assured that it is going to be richly educational and deeply reflective. And so the work that we do at the university as a whole in large part is informed by making sure that these best practices are utilized and specifically within SIEL we often will begin with the practices in mind as we develop programs. Patrick is on the board of directors fora. And he also has an academic certification through what's called the Experiential Education Academy. And you can graduate from the academy through taking a series of required in an elective courses just like any graduation. And these different courses help faculty members better understand how to utilize it. And we have at least three faculty members for the EEA. So Experiential Education Academy faculty members and myself and Todd Petersen Dr. Todd Petersen teach in this academy and so we have an opportunity to travel to some of these workshops and and teach our colleagues from around the country these courses. This helps provide a standard of practice that elevates the quality regardless of whether or not you are trying to do internships or service learning or study abroad or you're looking at you know richly active learning in the K12 system or things like that. If you can achieve these standards and apply these principles you can be assured of the quality of the learning.

[00:13:10] Right. OK. I have a question about that but and did I see you do a celebratory dance because you are now certified.

[00:13:17] Yeah I finished my last class when we were in Flagstaff. Congratulations and it was on reflexion which is my favorite topic. And it was taught byDr. Todd Petersen. As a matter of fact.

[00:13:28] Well and listeners of the show will also recognize Dr. Todd Petersen because he was actually on the podcast a few weeks ago talking about his new book. So that's the same guy we're talking about he gets around well I'd love to get more into that. The reflection point in one of our next little segments here and I did want to just make sure that anybody listening can get a hold of those eight best practices where's the easiest way to find those.

[00:13:59] I'm the librarian so let me tell you. So anyway use Google and put in n s e e and eight principles. Then you should find it and they will get you to the page.

[00:14:12] I really love that because I do think sometimes there's terminology confusion that can arise. And so rather than thinking of it experience and learning as all these words you know rather the set of practices as being the guiding principles. I think it's great. So thanks for that. All of that. All right. It's time for a little bit of music and I've got a couple of songs for you. This first song is Il et Elle and it's by Broc but also a great African singer Miriam Makeba who I featured on the show before is featured on this track. So you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour This is KSUU Thunder 91.1.

[00:18:02] OK so we're back here at the A.P.E.X Hour And that song was called Il et Elle and the artist is Broc but it features Miriam Makeba a really wonderful African singer and you can definitely check both of those artists out. This is theA.P.E.X Hour You're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1 and we're back with kind of a roundtable of people who love and believe in and are passionate about experiential learning which we are really embracing here at SUU and just really reaping the benefits in seeing what happens with our students when we embrace these this this way. This model. So I'd like to kind of get back to it and talk about the teaching and talk about how experience and learning plays out. On a practical level and so I'm wondering if maybe we could start with Silvia if you could share just some of your either tactics or feelings or ways that you really approach it and bring it into your teaching.

[00:19:12] First of all I have seen a huge transformation in our students once they started participating in experiential learning so about three years ago. No actually more like two years ago we piloted our new curriculum in our ESL program in order to make it more experiential. We worked on it for some time and kind of included some experiential elements in a way so that three of our six proficiency levels are now completely project based. But that doesn't mean that we don't do experiential learning in our task based levels. That just means those levels that are project based give students the full term which in our case is seven weeks to work on a project of their choice. And so I feel very fortunate because I get to teach the introductory project at base level for students who have maybe never ever had any kind of experiential learning in their life. And so you know they're coming to us and keep in mind these are international students most of them are 17 to 20 years old from a variety of countries and educational systems and backgrounds. And so you know there can be at first a little bit of kind of opposition because the they are shocked. Where are the worksheets where's the grammar whereas the pronunciation where is you know.

[00:20:29] You find that generally students coming from abroad expect a little more traditional.

[00:20:34] Yes. And something Dr. Todd Petersen brought to my mind a couple of weeks ago he said you know be careful using the word traditional because that's essentially what we're doing now is we're going trying to get back to a more traditional way of learning being experiential. But so yeah but I do find that the students coming from those more conventional systems of teaching language. You know they need more structure. And sometimes you give them a lot of choice and they don't know what to do with it. And so because our terms are so short we have kind of limited opportunity to sell them on the idea in the first week and then still hope they get five weeks to work on a project. Nonetheless like I said earlier it's been really amazing to see some of the same students coming through our program you know to three terms later. So after they've had at least one project base class come to a task class and still use some of those transferable skills without being told to use them. And you know maybe they don't even think about it a lot of times because I like to say we're tricking them into learning. Right. Sometimes they don't really realize what it is that they're gaining and then seeing them use it in consecutive levels is really exciting. You know I'm not saying this happens 100 percent of the time but when it does I know that it is because of experiential learning. I know it's because of those project classes.

[00:22:03] And when you design them I mean what kinds of things do you go to the eight practices that we were talking about or can you give us some examples of a particularly successful projects or practices that you found.

[00:22:19] Yes. What I can tell you is we have our own set of student learning outcomes of course. And so we have to make sure that we're meeting them. But in the meantime as we're meeting them the way we designed our project based courses is so that each assignment is focused on the project. So to give you an example a student will come in to this project based class and get a list of kind of guiding questions to help them think of a topic on their own or arrive at a topic or maybe expose them to something interesting that might stimulate kind of self inquiry or curiosity in them. So for example saying what you always wanted to know more about but never had a chance to do it or what have you tried and failed and would like to try again. So for example a topic one of my favorite projects ever was a student who created basically a way to enhance your wireless internet signal in your dorm. So it was in the media and kind of problem solvers student who had an issue in his dorm. And so he chose this for his project and for five weeks he worked on it collecting primary secondary research interviewing people on and off campus going out into the local community finding RadioShack and so on and so forth. And again keep in mind these are in many cases beginner language proficiency students. So it takes you know they're building confidence they're learning how to approach a stranger in a foreign language and many other metacognitive kind of skills. Does that answer your question.

[00:23:54] Yeah That's awesome.

[00:23:54] I'm super excited so I have to stop talking because I could go on forever.

[00:23:58] No that's wonderful. I think it's great and I love that you touched on that concept that we're really actually getting back to sort of original ways of learning you know and that that's kind of yeah we're actually getting back to traditional learning in that way by doing that. Does anybody else have any teaching experiences or or tactics or advice for teaching or are things that you use that you'd like to share.

[00:24:27] Well as I mentioned earlier I run a study abroad program and I mean I think at first blush people would assume that it's just inherently experiential. And that's true but that doesn't mean that it's inherently inherently experiential learning. Right. So we have built into the process not only sort of traditional means of reflection consider what you did and write about it right. But we have on site daily reflection activities that we do while we're traveling. And every morning we meet and every morning we just sort of I don't know that the students are fully aware that I'm guiding through some different types of thought but problem was some questions. Okay so. So these are these are my theater students. So last night we went to Shakespeare's Globe and you experienced this. How is it different than you know when you go to a more modern theater experience. And then what do those differences tell us. And what did they tell us about the experience of being in the theater and what did they tell us about how we process what it is that we're seeing and how does it change how we approach and think about what it is we're seeing and learning and so these guided reflections every morning become sort of the lynchpin because then that day as we go out and are experiencing the new things for that day they are processing that I'm going to tomorrow I'm going to be doing some reflection on this and we're going to be getting some pointed questions about not only what we've been experiencing but what are we learning from that experience. Next morning have a reflection and then that day. Now they have two days worth of reflection helping to inform that has the experience they're beginning to process the learning part that comes with it. And so you know one of the ideas of experiential education is that it really is like us a spiral Yeah you know that every time you do it you should be able to the next time do it even better. And gain more from the process. You know we draw sometimes and it looks like a circle. But really it should be spiraling. Oh I like that. So good an opportunity to see that day after day after day on these study abroads. It doesn't just become something they're doing. They really are processing what they're doing in a way that really informs learning. .

[00:27:25] Well that gets into the reflection component which I'd love to talk more about. And I know that's something you're really passionate about and so can you share you know why. Why the reflection component means so much to you and what it means to you and just talk about that. Because I know it's something you like.

[00:27:45] Yeah I like it a lot and that there is a quote from John Dewey. I don't know. He was a philosopher but also an educator and he says we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. Oh so just having an experience is not enough right. You need to really think about what does this mean. What did I learn. How would I do it differently without that reflection it's kind of- I mean it's still useful but a reflection puts it on.

[00:28:16] Yeah I love that. And so did that just always jump out at you is the key piece or is that something that you saw the results of many times I mean or did you just kind of initially connect with that like oh this this really makes sense to me.

[00:28:33] Yeah I think as a life practice reflection is really really useful. So if you just kind of float along and never think about anything you cannot improve you can't really learn. So that always has made sense to me. So adapting it or including it in an educational experience made so much sense. Now sometimes you read about something you don't like this makes so much sense. I'm going to try this with my students and it really really works. So the challenge is though that I've found is that you can't just tell students to reflect. Right. It's difficult. You know it's it requires thought time introspection and those are all skills we need to teach students and guide them along what is a good reflection what is a bad reflection and so on.

[00:29:21] So for the teachers listening and we may have you know not just college teachers but teachers of all different age groups listening. Do any of you have any advice. Maybe they're thinking wow you know I really like to bring this reflection component into into my classroom into my learning environment. Does anybody have any advice for how to get going with that.

[00:29:45] Well just just a quick comment and then I'll let some of the faculty members talk a little bit more about it. But you know the prompts that are used to help and I use the term from the beginning guided reflection. Right. You just don't say go reflect on what is reflection and what is effective reflection and what kind of prompts elicit the kinds of responses and thinking that we want students to engage in. So there's a carefully there's a careful design process about how you guide that reflection. And so in our in our curriculum that we use in for example the edge program you know the questions that help guide that for students has been well crafted and designed to help students do deeper level thinking about the process. But one thing we haven't talked about very much is this idea of intentionality. So we talk a lot about reflection but reflection is the is it comes after the experience but before the expert this is the idea of thinking about it before you actually do it. And one thing that we that part of our our brand at SUU relative experience of learning is we we we challenge students to articulate as much as they can about what it is they're going to do before they do it in a way that sets up the experience to be deeper richer more meaningful for the students but then gives them a chance because you can't really reflect until you think about what were your expectations before you did the thing then you did that thing and now what did you learn? So intentionality is just as important and vital in this process as I think reflection is and a lot of times that's where students struggle because because of their lack of experience with things they are not quite sure how to think about what it is they're going to do they just want to do it so they can get experience. But when you're when someone is asked to to do more work before they actually do something it makes the experience of doing it that much richer and deeper for the students so it's a really important thing to keep in mind. It is this idea of intentionality.

[00:32:06] Intentionality before then experience happens and then the reflection. I think that's a really clean easy way to sort of for new people to to really kind of embrace that that's great.

[00:32:18] And that's why it's longitudinal. It's not something you can do quickly. It's developmental and longitudinal and that's one of the pieces that has to be understood. Right.

[00:32:28] And I think that Patrick said that that's sometimes hard for students I would say that that's sometimes very hard for faculty member right because faculty members if you're going to let your students experience learning be authentic then that means that they need to make some of the decisions if not many or most of the decisions they need to come up with the ideas for what they want to do why they want to do it how they're going to do it what they hope to learn from it. You know the process is. I mean even things like the management things like the student the international student who worked on Wi-Fi improvement for his dormitory part of what made that successful was I imagine that it was something that he or she wanted to do and was something that they got excited about. But if they had come to class and said Okay your project this semester students is you're all going to go and examine the Wi-Fi strength of your dormitory rooms and many students would have never connected with that because that wasn't their thing. And so that is hard for faculty members to say. Now they often though often say to us Well what do I tell them to do. Often times you don't tell them to do anything. You let them tell you.

[00:33:52] But it can get very freeing and I think a lot of people don't realize that when they get started with it you know that it can be very freeing as well. I think sometimes faculty members or maybe just me you know fall into the trap of I have to have everything all solved for them I have to figure everything out so that everything works you know. And I think it's a nice message to tell people that know if you if you go into some of these processes and some of these practices you don't have to have everything figured out. I mean you you actually you want them to be figure and I think that can be actually freeing if you can get your brain around it.

[00:34:34] Well it can be, because then you also have to ask the question what happens when they fail. Right. They come up with this plan. They try to go and execute it. It doesn't work. Exactly. Well if you have embraced the idea that it's the learning associated with the experience not the experience then again that's liberating because the project itself cannot turn out the way they had hoped to at all. I mean can fail. Right. And yet the learning associated with that experience can be incredibly rich and you know it's not life. Don't we learn a lot more sometimes from our failures and our successes because it forces reflection as opposed to just celebration and back-padding. It forces us all what went wrong and how we don't like failures so we say how will I make sure this doesn't happen to me again which is essentially a reflection. And so I I think that's part of the authenticity of experiential learning is the fact that we have an education are real comfortable with the idea of failure equals success. Maybe we should be more. Exactly.

[00:35:44] And you had something you wanted to add.

[00:35:46] Well some things that Patrick mentioned all kind of go back to the eight principles we were talking about earlier. So for a good experience there has to be that intention from the student but also from the faculty member to plan it. And also you may not lay out what the project projects are going to be but you have to provide that foundation right before you set your students loose. So that's really important. An authentic experience. I know Silvia sends her students to the ice cream shop where they have to order which is petrifying when you don't speak the language right. If I went to China I probably couldn't order ice cream to save my life. That reflection piece we already talked about but also orientation and training related to the experience is more internship related I imagine and then monitoring like how is the activity how the experience going. How can we improve it. And then something we haven't talked about yet today is assessment and evaluation which we have to kind of see how how did things turn out. We had this plan. What happened? And in the end talking about celebration there has to be- that's the eigth principal acknowledgement. So celebrate with the student that this activity has been completed and you get a nice certificate or something showing that you completed it.

[00:37:16] So again those eight principles are the eight best practices can be a great model. Well let me give another song and go in and then let's come back and talk about this trip that we just took where we all got a chance to really get exposed to some great great sessions and learn even more and that was that our conference that was it at the end of June in Flagstaff Arizona. But in the meantime I've got a song by Stevie Wolf and it's Yves Klein Blue and this is the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1.

[00:41:31] OK welcome back everyone. That was Yves Klein Blue by Stevie Wolf and this is Lynn Vartan. And you're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour. Today our topic is experiential learning. And one of the things that inspired that was that we all just came back from a really amazing conference which we nicknamed well because of the acronym the Elli conference which was in Flagstaff Arizona. So Jeb would you mind just kind of give us an overview of what Elli is what it stands for, what is this conference?

[00:42:05] Sure so Elli Stanford experiential learning leadership institute it's an organization within Southern Utah Utah University that promotes experiential learning nationwide. It is sort of multiple facets to it. One of which is this annual conference that we do for educators in higher education K12. And from the nonprofit world we have attendees come from all over the United States and Canada. We also have what we call a leadership retreat where I say I work at an institution and three or four of my colleagues and I have a great idea is something what want to launch at our school but we just haven't figured it all out yet. Walk through the process and they have had time to do that. Exactly. So we have this retreat where the schools from around North America write applications to Ellie and say Here is the team we've put together. Here's what we want to do. Can we attend your retreat? And then Elli brings consultants from around the country who are have particular expertise in doing this type of work. And we go to a place outside of Moab that's very very isolated beautiful very beautiful. And we walk the teams through sort of a process for spending a few days focused and then we set them loose and the teams work and report to the consultants and develop these projects and then they come back because reflection is important and assessment report is important. Then they come back to our annual conference and do sessions and report on their progress. We also do consulting work. We get calls all the time from around the country and around the world or even asking for guidance in different aspects of experiential learning Southern Utah University is really sort of the the you know front edge of this were one of the very first if not the first university to have a graduation requirement and experiential education where the students authored the projects as opposed to saying everybody who comes to our school is going to graduate they're going to all these are going to they're going to all do study abroad or you know we really laid it out and we provided a shepherding experience where the students created it and worked on it through their time at school. And so people call us all the time. And so we provide consulting both here at SUU and on other campuses and then connecting with people through the Leadership Institute in the conference and things like that. We've also been developing some things specifically for K12 so that we can better partner with them and our annual conference, we just had our fourth annual conference in Arizona Yeah. Next year will be our fifth anniversary which is which is exciting for us as we grow ever year get bigger and bigger.

[00:45:27] And next year for anybody interested, We will be hosting here in Cedar City.

[00:45:32] We will, Next year we'll be focusing on the national parks of southern Utah. So one of the things we train do is put our money where our mouth is. So as opposed to a conference where you go and spend the entire time in session after session after session. We do recognize the value of not traditional but conventional classroom type of learning right. And so our conference is sort of a hybrid. There are regular sessions where we we learn from each other and people submit proposals and do best practices and prevent present their research. But then we go out we take the conference out and we do excursions. We have done everything from I mean going through the national parks to poetry writing to birdwatching to geology to service oriented things. We just take the conference participants and they do these experiences and give an opportunity fto reflect on them. And we try to provide such a rich array that there can be some authenticity because we let them choose which of these excursions do you want to participate in and how will you utilize this excursion to help you learn from the comfort. And so next year we're going to we hope to include Bryce Canyon, Zion we're talking about Capitol Reef, Bryanhead, lots of different things I mean to show you is the University of the parks and so that's going to be our focus this year.

[00:47:07] It's a great model for a conference. And Silvia you presented at the conference can you tell us a little bit about your session. I was there it was a really good one.

[00:47:18] Thanks. I can I. Before I do that though I just want to kind of echo what you said Lynn. It is a great model for a conference and I haven't I haven't had a lot of conference experience. You know I can't say I've been to more than maybe 12 conferences ever. But this is by far my favorite because it's really kind of an immersion experience because I connect with people because I'm at their presentations I connect with people during meals I connect with people during these excursions and I love that or at least the excursions I went on had an element of reflection embedded in them to really kind of solidify the cycle of experiential learning so that was really cool. My presentation was basically on how cultural competence and experiential learning go hand in hand and how we can enhance one with the other and vice versa. One thing that has been brought up earlier is this idea of reflection right. We all know it's important but I would like to push more the idea of flexion as well you know this idea of are we assuming students want an experience you know an experience of learning. And what can we do to help them on that journey of openness and curiosity and kind of basically elements of flexion or I don't know what to call it.

[00:48:44] It's a little bit about that like that intentionality. what patrick was talking about you know going in thinking about what are you going to try to get out of this Yes. What's your what are you trying to get to. Yeah.

[00:48:57] And just being aware of your own expectations of the experience and then translating those to your instructor professor you know can be a really instrumental tool in looping the reflection with the next one and the preflection and the reflection. I like this idea. This is another thing Dr. Petersen talked about at the NSE workshop of reflection was you know it should be revisited consistently and the term he used was looping and that really stuck with me.

[00:49:28] And like the spiral concept which jeb was talking about too.

[00:49:31] Exactly it ties ties back to that. But I do strongly feel that that reflection are actually what I want to say is that failure is instructional and we know that from life and we don't have to you know have experiential learning teach us that we know that it's instructional. And so that's something I incorporate it into my into my presentation. But the focus was mostly on cultural competence and how experiential learning can help us enhance cultural competence which is so very important always has been but especially now more than ever with you know efforts to internationalize the campus and efforts to globalize the curriculum. And just to get along. Right. Right. So. So that was kind of what I talked about at the conference.

[00:50:17] Great. Well Ellen as a conference participant you probably got to see a lot of different sessions. Do you have any memories or things you'd like to share.

[00:50:27] One really cool one was by a guy named Dean from the University of Utah. Oh yeah I heard about that. And he did kind of a group exercise with us to get a shared experience as a group. We read something together and then talked about what we saw in the piece and he does this a lot with his student groups and it was really fun to be a part of that. I heard so many good things about that session. I missed that one but I heard several people really really enjoyed it. Yeah it was super intense and he has all these different readings on different topics that then elicit good really good insight.

[00:51:12] Can you tell me what made that so noticeable to you stand out so much. Was it the way he guided it or was it the reading hymns itself or a combination.

[00:51:23] It was really both. I mean but I think mostly how he led it just observing how he's very skilled person he does this all the time with many different groups how he could kind of let things flow but then pull people back in. It's an art. So I really watched what he was doing. It was fascinating and he also has this thing that I never heard about it's. Wait: Why am I talking so. Oh my gosh. I will just on an on but he says Okay I want you to be aware of this wait thing. So everybody gets a word in and yeah it was just really well done. I love that. If you ever get a chance to see him in action.

[00:52:07] And then what was his name one more time.

[00:52:09] Dean. He's the executive director of the Bennion center. OK which is one of the nation's premier service learning community engagement centers. And they do incredible work. They're great. They are a national model. And all the community engagement centers and service learning centers and all higher education institutions in Utah work together and partner on a lot of projects and certainly our dirham best practices so that as a state we really do a great job with service learning and engagement.

[00:52:52] Well this has just been so fascinating we're actually already almost out of time but before we go I didn't even have time to play my third song which is great. The conversation was flowing so nicely. I'd like to do my favorite little quick thing which is just kind of go around the table and say something that's making you happy or turning you on this week and it can be a song or a TV show or a book or really anything it's just kind of something that inspires other people and me and it could be it could be like the bird I saw in my backyard or if there's something that is just kind of you're really jazzed about this week. So Silvia Do you have something. What's turning you on.

[00:53:34] How much time do we have. OK I'm going to keep it short. I do feel inspired by birds in my backyard every day. But what's really cool for me this week is I get to finish my Damascus steel knife that I've been making and it's been a really long process. I have I don't know how many hours in it but the last kind of session should happen today or tomorrow. Making a knife. Yes. And in Damascus steel so it's the strongest possible steel you could ever make. So yeah I started from scratch you know it's basically a project I guess. It's really neat. And in the process meeting some amazing people so that's that's always exciting.

[00:54:18] That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing Patrick how about you. What's making you happy this week?

[00:54:24] July Mornings on campus at SUU. When the monsoons kind of kick in and things freshen up just that cool warm warm cool however you want to say it walk across campus in the morning coming to work that just no better place than the SUU campus on a summer morning. So that's got me jazzed this morning.

[00:54:50] Beautiful thank you. How about you?

[00:54:50] OK. I don't watch TV but I recently found James Corden's Carpool Karaoke online. And there's so much fun. I mean it just shows that music bridges so many cultures and he can just interact with these very famous people I guess he's pretty famous himself now. But at such a personal level or with music it's amazing to watch the energy and the happiness in those videos is so cool.

[00:55:16] Oh thank you. That's awesome. Those are great. I love them. Jeb how about you.

[00:55:21] Oh well I had an awesome experience yesterday. So one of the actresses at Utah Shakespeare Festival is somebody that I went to college with have done some work with and two of our friends from college who are also both incredible artists. They went to come down and see Colleen perform for her and I got a Texan saying hey we're going to meet at the French spot. We'd love to see you. So the four of us got together and it was just I mean we were practically in tears. And for several of us we hadn't seen each other in you know 25 or more years and we were chuckling. Was like You know I haven't seen you in person but I know the name of your dog and I know what you had for dinner yesterday because of social media contacts. But it just wasn't the same thing as to be able to hug them and I've just been on cloud nine ever since.

[00:56:21] That was just beautiful. Thank you for sharing. My thing that's making me happy or turn me on this week is I started a new book that I heard about on a podcast which is about a very old topic. It's not nearly as like warm and fuzzy as everything that everybody's mentioned but it's. Jeffrey Toobin book called American Heiress which is the Patty Hearst and her story which I didn't really know much about. I don't really know that story very well. And I mean it reads like a novel. I mean in his writing is so great. And I heard him on the podcast Here's the thing which which I really love which is Alec Baldwin's interview podcast. And I just thought I'd pick up that book and check it out. And it is really something I'd like to thank my panel for being here today. Thank you guys so much for sharing about experiential learning in the conference and for being on the show. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. All right we're signing off for the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Have a great week everyone.

[00:57:25] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3:00p.m. for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University. Add new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime we would love to see you at our events on campus. Find out more check out suu.edu/apex, Until next week. This Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour here on Thunder 91.1