5 Ways experiential learning can help you
Books are our best friends. No denying that fact. But you might be missing out on something really powerful if you limit your list of best friends to just books. Let’s say you buy a book that teaches you everything that is required to build a rocket. But if you never implement that knowledge that the book gave you, then the only rocket you would ever be able to build is the one with LEGO bricks. That is why, it’s imperative that we befriend “Action” along with our beloved books. And it’s just this combination of theoretical knowledge with its implementation that the millennials like to call ‘Experiential Learning’.
We all have been learning through our experiences ever since we knew what learning is. Let’s go back to when you were learning a language, say English. Your teacher gives you some homework to learn the words and sentences in your books. The next day, she calls you in front of the entire class. She asks you to talk to her in English, using the same words you learnt the previous day. As much as you hated it, you were actually “learning by doing”. Whenever you would fumble, your teacher would correct you. And the next time you spoke, you were making sure that you didn’t repeat the same mistake. What you were doing essentially was acting on the “feedback”. Learning by doing and reflecting on your performance via feedback is what experiential learning is about. Do you still think you would be able to talk in English just by memorizing those grammar books? Both Wren and Martin would be turning in their graves right now if you said yes. Because – after all, there are so many ways experiential learning can really help you:
1.Preparation for the real world
You’ve thoroughly read about all the concepts in Javascript – callbacks, hoisting, promises – everything. You’re now thinking building your first app would be child’s play! Awww, bunny 🙂
What’ll happen is, first you’ll struggle with the setup. Once you manage that somehow, you’ll move onto writing a simple Hello World to check everything is working fine. To your surprise, you’ll find yourself landing on StackOverflow – once again. Once you fix that and move ahead, you’ll be greeted by yet another error, and you’ll find yourself wondering why the books never mentioned all this!
The fact is you only learn by doing. Things are way bigger than what is apparent. You just look at the tip of the iceberg by reading about concepts – books are just a compass. You chalk out the map yourself when you practice. Learning by doing expands your thinking. You’ll find yourself analyzing, asking questions, investigating, experimenting and solving problems. Essentially, you realize how big and deep the iceberg really is!
2. Employers are going to fall in love with you
Who doesn’t want to hire people who are confident at solving real problems? All these companies have a tough job to do – keep their customers happy. For that, they need employees who can solve business problems as fast and as efficiently as possible.
If you’ve had an experiential learning in your trade, you know the ins and outs of how your world works. You have built stuff. You have a good idea about the entire iceberg. It means you’ve gone through and solved problems that have made you a tougher person in your line of work. This also implies that since you already have the problem solving muscle in you, it can be trained even faster. You will have a faster pickup when it comes to something new in your work, as compared to someone who hasn’t had any experience. In simple words, you won’t let your employer’s Titanic hit the iceberg and sink 🙂
3.Books will suddenly start to make sense
My textbook used to have this fancy, diamond studded definition for Javascript:
JavaScript is a dynamic computer programming language which is lightweight and most commonly used as a part of web pages, whose implementations allow client-side script to interact with the user and make dynamic pages. It is an interpreted programming language with object-oriented capabilities.
While whatever the textbook wrote was absolutely correct, it somehow seemed to be too much for my delicate brain cells. But when I wrote a few Javascript programs, I understood what the textbook was trying to say to me. What I realized was, HTML creates all the buttons and boxes on the web page. The appearance. But if you want those buttons to do something, that’s when you need to depend on Javascript. This would help me to “interact with the user and make dynamic pages”. And for it to work, the Javascript code has to be added in a “script” on the “client”s end. It worked like magic.
That’s the thing with experience – once you see and analyze for yourself how things are done, everything starts to break itself down for you, and you get a deeper understanding of how it is working.
4. You'll retain information for longer
No surprises in guessing that I forgot the textbook definition of Javascript, right after my exam was over. The definition, the concept, the idea – everything vanished into thin air. The reason? I never understood it back then. But after writing a few programs, I understood what the idea was, and I remember it even today, years after writing my first program.
I’m sure you’re aware of that “Aha!!” moment you experience when you feel like you finally “got” something after a hard struggle. Our brains work in a peculiar way. It’s only what you learnt and understood out of your Aha moments that the brain decides to keep. All the rest is forgotten. So, if you’ve had the experience of analyzing, investigating and experimenting with whatever you’re trying to learn, be assured of the fact that your brain won’t ditch you in the interview you have your eyes on 🙂
5. You'll see yourself asking for more
The deeper you get into something, the more you realize how little you know. The feeling of satisfaction you get after understanding the first thing, is enough to make you feel hungry for more. You feel that if you could understand that, you can understand even more! In short, experiential learning puts you in your beast mode. And before you even realize, you have already started enjoying the thing that you once used to dread.
So – becoming thorough with all your concepts is super important. But the equation will be balanced only when you support your theoretical knowledge with the experience of applying it. When in doubt, just get your hands dirty and try it out! 🙂
Author: Simmipreet Kaur