The Experience of Experiential Exercises in Management Classes: A Professor's View

The experiential exercise is a teaching method that allows students to be engaged in the learning process. Experiential learning is widely recognized as an effective way for students to learn about essential business management topics. Experiential exercises are employed as a means to increase the student's comprehension of such topics as innovation and creativity, social responsibility and ethics, team effectiveness, decision making, organizational and international culture, emotional intelligence, and conflict management. A key to the experiential exercise is that it provides an opportunity for the student to learn in a manner that shifts them from a passive to an active participant in the learning process. While research emphasizes the relationship between experiential exercises and student learning, little has been written about experiential exercises and facilitator learning. This paper proposes that preparation; using student feedback and the reflective mode of the Experiential Learning Theory model may increase facilitator learning and contribute to the successful implementation of experiential exercises in the classroom. The paper includes the author's experience with experiential exercises and recommendation for future study.