EM203 – EXPERENTIAL LEARNING DAUNTE NAGRA – MY JOURNAL MY LEARNING EXPERINECES In my first 2 years of my university career I’ve learned best through trial and error, also known as experience. I always like to try something and even if I don’t succeed the first time I like to revaluate and try again. This is something that has worked well for me in the past and I believe with continuing to gain more experience in every aspect of my life I will better myself a little bit more every day. Experiential learning has helped me develop into the person and student I am now and it will continue to do so. One of my sources of learning has been golf. Since my first year at Laurier I have been on the varsity golf team and was fortunate enough to be part of the 2019 championship team that won OUAs. I have learned a lot from competitive golf over the course of my life and learning by experience has been the main source of that. Throughout my career in golf I have spent many hours on the range working on different movements in my golf swing to perfect it and part of that is trying to bring what I call range ‘feels’ to make them course ‘reals’. This means to me that although it may feel like I’m doing something properly I can go out to the course, experiment it and truly see if I am doing the motion correctly. The other main part of golf that I’ve learned from experience has been tournament golf, tournament golf is one of the most stressful and nerve racking environments in all of sports to me. Since covid canceled what would have been my second year on the golf team I had a lot of competitive rust coming into this year. Playing a regular round and a tournament are two very different things as in a tournament every shot counts and one bad shot can derail your round. My first few tournaments this year I struggled heavily trying to regain my competitive touch and mental game, eventually through constantly putting myself in pressure situations whether it was in tournament or even in practise or regular rounds with my teammates. I’ve learned in golf that experience is what makes you better, you have to learn to adapt to situations you may have never seen and that all comes from experience and figuring out what works for me and my golf game. Another source of learning for me has been my program choice at Laurier, economics. Economics is a very hands on course in terms of doing the assignment/homework questions and constantly testing your abilities. In all my economic classes I have had to constantly test my critical thinking out whilst doing weekly practise quizzes to ensure I was able to connect what I have memorized to answer the questions efficiently and effectively. Doing these weekly quizzes I am able to see what I know and what I don’t from a particular lesson and allows me to revaluate and work to be better. HOW IVE LEARNED IN THIS COURSE THUS FAR 2 I always considered myself tech savvy but taking this course has in a way opened my eyes to the advantages technology can provide to us. Twitter is an incredibly confusing and complex social media platform that to me was always just a way to look at peoples thoughts but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I have learned so far in this course that technology is going to be a very big part of our future and looking at just my education through a technological lens I think has helped me greatly this year. LEARNING BY DOING – EXPERENTIAL LEARNING KEY TAKEAWAYS: Learning something new by gaining direct hands on experience Able to reflect on your experience and asses what you have done right and wrong Ensures you learn why you may have went wrong instead of simply what you did wrong Often done via field work (for me it was done on a golf course) but could also be done online (this class!) Also can be done online on social media platforms where students can connect and learn what others are doing that they aren’t on the app and allows them to learn new things as time goes on In EM203 we use many concepts that are derived from experiential learning. Our professor poses questions on our discussion board and we as students are asked to answer them and reply to other students posts to better learn the content. Students decide how they want to go about the discussion posts and to me that allowed me to try some different things out and found something I liked and have 3 continued to do that so far. Students get to choose their own learning skills and post about them and once we choose one we may present it via the discussion board and see if we liked what we have come up with, if not we learn and move on. EXPERENTIAL LEARNING PERSONAL PROS AND CONS PROS - - Able to perform the same task better each time CONS - My lack of motivation to try new things as I have learned from the past sometimes comes into play and instead of Improves my critical thinking as in order to learning new things via experiential learning I like succeed in certain situations I must adapt to that to continue to improve in things I am already situation and use all my resources good at More fun to me, doing something and testing it out to me is more fun than just reading about it - Easy to get sidetracked and sometimes find it difficult to learn on my own when there is not a clear path in front of me as I begin to get off topic and am then using my time inefficiently TYPES OF EXPERENTIAL LEARNING IN EM203 Inquiry Based Learning - Allows for learners to choose their own topic - Learners come to their own conclusion based on their own research as instructor plays a very passive hands off approach - In this course we are given a topic and we as students are expected to come to our own conclusion based on reading we have done - We also got to choose our own field of study (specific skill) during one of the lessons which allowed us to explore a topic we liked 4 Problem Based Learning - Lets learners work in groups to determine what each group member knows and doesn’t know - In this class we are put in discussion groups and are told to reflect off each others posts and asses what we know compared to something a group member may know - We have also learned how to effectively navigate through twitter which may be useful in the future for networking and meeting and keeping in touch with other Case Based Learning - By using real life scenarios learners are able to adapt and learn new skills used for many different situations - Helps learners develop analytical thinking skills and allows them to reflect on their actions - Each week in this course we are given material to read and it is up to us how we choose to discuss our learnings in the discussion board - We are able to display what we know in many different ways via discussion board and are given the option to choose how we go about doing that - We are also told to reply to others posts which may result in conflict as many student differ in opinions 5 - REFLECTING ON THIS ASSIGNMENT One of my many goals of taking this course was too not only learn more about the online world but to better use technology to display my opinions for every one of my classes. I tried to use a combination of paragraphs, visuals as well as little notes in my assignment to keep it interesting and fun rather than in essay format. This course has helped me think about new ways to display my opinions on assignments and I’m only hoping it will continue to do so. In choosing top do a blog/journal style to present my findings I thought this matched my learning style as I am one of the few students who I think is more proficient in Microsoft power point and excel than in Microsoft word. Aside from basic paragraph writing in Microsoft word I never had experience with creating themes and using templates to make my assignment look more presentable and by trying all these different options I experienced with trial and error until I finally liked the outcome. I learned a bunch of new things from Microsoft word using YouTube as well as the help option on the software to help me navigate through it and better my placements of paragraphs and visuals. As I was working on my assignment I got better and better and it proved to me that the most effective way I learn is by doing and gaining experience! 6 THANKS FOR READING MY EM203 JOURNAL, DAUNTE NAGRA 7
