Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?

One of my best learning experiences was in the fall of 2018 in the Outdoor Education class at UVic. It is my best experience because I learned lots, as well as thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and that is why I still remember it over a year later. We went for a walk through Mystic Vale, just off UVic campus, with the goal of learning about the basic geography of the area, and then how a student would teach that knowledge to a class to a class they were leading. I enjoyed this learning experience because everything was tangible. We were outside, in the environment we were learning about. We could touch whatever we wanted, and use physical objects for examples. From what I understand, this could be classified as a constructive learning environment, as I had lots of control over how I learned through experiencing the real world (Ertmer & Newby, 2013). Another aspect that made this learning experience positive is that I had an opportunity to practice what I had just learned. We split up into smaller groups, and pretended our classmates were elementary or high-school students that we were taking on a nature walk. We taught our peers about the geography of the area, with visuals to aid our verbal teaching. We also answered questions. The whole time, the professor was observing us. Despite that being stressful, it had its benefit: I was able to get immediate feedback. That was amazing as I could tweak my teaching for my next teaching session. I felt like that prevented me from developing bad habits. To summarize, my best learning experience was interactive and interesting, I had an opportunity to put what I learned to use shortly after, and I received immediate and personal feedback that I could implement.


References

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.