Experiential learning

Drawing on his own curiosity-driven approach to learning, moving from what and why to what if, he creates classrooms where students are encouraged to think critically, ask questions, and get hands-on with complex scientific ideas.

Across his teaching, Nathan brings a focus on inclusive experiential learning, whether through forensic workshops, creative projects, in-class games, or flexible course design that supports diverse learners.

He not only makes science accessible and engaging, but has a lasting impact on students' confidence, sense of belonging, and future paths.

And I'm excited to talk to him today.

And then gradually, once the students develop the foundational understanding, then I start to challenge them with the what-if questions to help them stimulate that kind of learning and for them to experiment on their own ideas and play and toy with those ideas.

So in the classroom, I try my best to make them be curious, to make them ask questions, to make them play with different information that they are given and how they can transform that information to new ideas, to new thoughts, to potentially make new inventions or innovations that they find worthwhile for their own self-learning.

On the theme of curiosity, both curiosity and active experiential learning feature prominently in your teaching.

Can you talk about how you try and develop that sense of curiosity in the students and emphasize that kind of active experiential learning, particularly because you teach across a range of modalities in person, virtual synchronous, virtual asynchronous?

I mean, the overarching MIT motto is mens et manus, which is Latin for mind and hand, I believe.

And so that's another thing that really stands out about the Sloan MBA is that there's a real emphasis on hands-on learning and the action learning labs are a really big part of that.

Can you dig into a little bit more detail about what some of those opportunities are and yeah, what sets them apart?

Yep.

yeah that's a really good question you have to i mean look at the context and how these decisions are made which isn't always transparent and so i think it's it's you know looking at um some of the decisions of what led up to this um you know kind of I guess that's the best word.

And have they looked at the literature to see what the benefits of field trips are as a form of experiential learning to their students? There's a lot of literature that says that experiential learning is absolutely critical to produce future leaders who are going to tackle some really complex issues.

And one of the ways of doing that is to help the students engage in field trips.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that's a parallel to be made.

But, I mean, the studies, there's lots of evidence in the literature that says that students learn differently, as we know.

And experiential learning is a critical part of learning for many learners, many students.

One of the things that you can look at is how universities and colleges right across Canada implement experiential learning into their curriculum.

Yeah.

You've become a strong advocate for experiential learning, hands-on sort of stuff.

So what are some of the experiences outside the classroom that have had the biggest impact on a student's confidence and career readiness?

I think the main thing is coaching.

So if I sort of took that route, I knew it was gonna go in a certain way.

And I mean, if we get talking about experiential learning and things like that, as a graduate student, I had a really great experience doing service learning.

And so when this opportunity came up at VCU, they're very well known for their service learning program.

And I knew that I wanted to do service learning with writing as well.

And so this question I have for you, I know it might be, you know, a very high level or not high level, but a very just large question that if you don't feel like you could answer it all, don't, I don't want you to panic, but I do feel like with the anxiety around AI, the anxiety around, um, humanities thinkers really worrying about where the place of writing, the place of research, the way the landscape is shifting and changing and how to still get students' voices out there and to let students get comfortable finding their way in a research process where there's going to be dead ends.

There's going to be doors you have to open and AI seems like a tantalizing way to maybe not have to face all these challenges that I think are so important for critical thinking and I'm sure you do too.

Do you feel like experiential learning right now is even more of and importance because of this anxiety around AI, these types of opportunities.

Yes, I can say absolutely.

So that's great to see it kind of mimicked in the classroom.

um so i know in your class what i love so much about the way you design the class is that you're providing not only the substantive information but you're having them actually engage in experiential learning which is the negotiation And so I want to know, you know, how does that, how do you think negotiation helps them understand? Because maybe you can explain it.

Are they assigned roles? Somebody has to do government, somebody has to do the private sector.

And like, do you feel, how do you feel like that helps to convey or communicate a lot of the things that you're trying to communicate to them?

And, uh, so-

Experiential learners they call them.

[laughs] Yeah.

I like to think of them as twice exceptional, don't you, Andrew? [laughs] Uh-

Honestly...

While doors closed during that time for many organizations, funding was challenging, volunteerism was challenging, working with schools, especially in an experiential learning space when students weren't in person, all those things were incredibly challenging.

But I also look back and see the growth and the change and the opportunity that came during that time.

As a community, we re-looked at education for young people, at the way that we're engaging mentors, and how we're thinking about the skills that students need to be successful in the future.

And we're bringing students together for a day of real world learning and making connections from what they're learning in the classroom to what they're going to need for their future.

Well, you kind of stole my next question because I was going to ask you, what is junior achievement all about? But in all reality, that's really what it is all about, giving the students a taste of real world.

When you said, when you picked up on experiential learning, yes, it is.

Our focus is that students have that real world connection and that it's not just reading something in a workbook or a textbook, but it's having firsthand experiences, meeting volunteers from the community, meeting people from different jobs, different industries, different sectors of the workforce so that students can start to picture a life for themselves.