OEL Hosts First Annual EL Mini-Conference
On June 11, 2024, the Office of Experiential Learning (OEL) hosted its first annual Experiential Learning (EL) Mini-Conference, bringing together more than fifty experiential learning practitioners from across MIT. The half-day event, hosted in the Hacker Reactor at Innovation Headquarters, welcomed staff and faculty with a variety of roles in the experiential learning world, including postdocs, instructors, program assistants, communications staff, executive directors, and more.
The event featured a keynote talk by Dr. Amanda Baker, Associate Director for Research and Evaluation in the Teaching + Learning Lab. Dr. Baker discussed the challenges of assessing learning outcomes in experiential settings, noting that learning is difficult to observe and measure when the goals are complex or abstract and the learning itself is student-driven and more focused on process than product. She described a variety of assessment strategies that programs might adopt, noting that using a mix of assessment types, each matched to the context in which it is used, will provide much more insight than any single assessment could.
During the lunch break, attendees embraced the challenge of expanding their networks, forging new connections and exchanging ideas. In the afternoon, the group split into interactive concurrent sessions, delving deeper into the topics of resource development, assessing climate education outcomes, and using student reflections to assess learning. These sessions were led by Daniel Griffin (Chancellor’s Office), Professor David McGee (Terrascope, EAPS), and Dr. Baker, respectively.
Feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive, and OEL looks forward to hosting the next mini-conference in 2025.
— Kate Weishaar, OEL