To experience long-term academic success, college students must shift from teacher-led pedagogical facilitation to student-driven andragogical exploration.  Can a university offer an experiential course that facilitates a student transformation to self-directed learning?   Yarbrough and Hughes created a four-step learning process called, Experience, Logic, Application, and Innovation.   The purpose of the learning process is to support college students on a self-directed exploration of their knowledge, skills, abilities and interests.  The following presentation will share information about the process, instructor training and student outcomes.

As professionals in higher education, our goal is to foster an environment where students begin to facilitate and direct their learning journeys.   From this perspective, Yarbrough and Hughes developed a learning process called Experience, Logic, Application, and Innovation.  The technique facilitates self-directed learning based on a four step information gathering process involving reflection on Experience, Logic, Application and Innovation (ELAI).  Specifically, students are taught to frame new information within four boundaries, reflection on previous personal experience, logical review of research and expert opinions, application of knowledge and potential for innovation.  With a scaffolded learning experience, students will apply the ELAI process to gain personalized understanding of the following ten skills as they relate to the student’s own learning experience:

1. Becoming a Self Directed Learner.
2. Goal Setting.
3. Learning Styles and Preferences.
4. Learning Community.
5. Writing for Effectiveness.
6. Speaking for Effectiveness.
7. Leadership.
8. Team Development.
9. Critical Thinking.
10. Reflection.

The presentation will provide an overview of the Experience, Logic, Application, and Innovation process, application strategies, suggestions for training instructors to apply the ELAI process, methods for supporting students on their journey of transforming to self-directed learners and conclusions based on instructor and student responses/outcomes to the experience.

Learning Outcomes

• Examine the significance of reflection in the transformational learning process.
• Plan to use the scaffolded ELAI reflection process to support online and on-campus student transformational learning experiences.
• Estimate the learning experiences generated through application of the ELAI process.

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30-Minute Roundtable Session

Communicating Transformative Learning