Developing Experiential Learning in Organizations

Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Amy Nathan Wright

While there are a few internship courses offered by the College of Liberal Arts, and a handful of internship classes offered in individual programs and departments, most of these are web-based courses, and none seem to offer other organizational experiences, such as service or leadership experiences. In addition, Human Dimensions of Organizations (HDO) is committed to Experiential Learning in all of our courses and want our HDO majors to have a more hands-on, curated experience focused not just on general professional development, but more specifically on people-centered problem solving within organizations. The courses currently offered use some of the same pedagogical strategies, such as reflective journals and papers, but they are quite general and focused on overall professional development. Since HDO is an interdisciplinary degree centered on how to use the humanities and behavioral and social sciences in an organizational context, this new course requiring an Experiential Learning experience with an organization can serve as a model for traditional disciplines in the Liberal Arts. HDO students go into a wide range of professions, so having the flexibility of several options for the organizational experience is key. Students will begin the semester by finding their experiential organizational role, whether that be an internship, a service experience, or when approved by the instructor, a leadership role in an organization. We will start by having HDO students reflect on their values and goals and to explain why they are seeking out experiences with the organizations they profile as their options in their first reflective journal. This process is not only key in engaging students in the process of selection by having them thoroughly review the organization’s mission and web presence and in making them feel invested in their organizational experience by articulating their goals for the organizational experience, but it also forces students to clarify their broader personal and professional goals and to make connections between their organizational experience to their academic goals and experiences. Next, students will reflect on their introduction and orientation into the organization, reflecting on their own experience and noting insights and critiques concerning the organization’s overall ability to foster a welcoming environment. Subsequent journals will allow students to dig deeper into their organizational experiences and analyze dynamics that they feel are key to their future professional development and career interests. Students will end the semester with a final paper that requires them to connect their interdisciplinary educational experiences in HDO with their organizational experience, articulating how they used what they’ve learned in HDO in their organizational experience, as well as how their organizational experience has shaped their understanding of what they’ve learned and how to recognize what they still need to learn.