LEARNING BY DOING
Aristotle wrote, “for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” This is the essence of experiential learning. Learning by doing employs a “hands-on approach” where participants learn through a spectrum of experiences.
A SPECTRUM OF EXPERIENCES
This spectrum includes:
1. Strategically designed experiences
2. Engaging in a learning initiative
3. Action planning, problem solving and conflict resolution
4. Achieving a result or set of outcomes
5. Reflecting on what happened and why it happened
6. Transfer of learning to future initiatives and real-world applications
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
This style of learning is effective because the learner is playing an active role in the learning experience and seeing immediate feedback from their actions. It is this feedback and what these actions produce that educates the participant. For instance, you might hear this dialogue in a debrief: A member of the group might say, “When we all talk at once we get nothing done and we fail.
When we take turns talking and everyone listens we are much more productive.” Experiencing this is much more effective because the participants are actually living it and seeing the problem with their current behavior and not passively being told by an instructor that it is more effective to listen than to have everyone talking at the same time.
A LASTING IMPRESSION
Empower Leadership employs several experiential activities and initiatives into its Emerge programming. We believe facilitated experiences focused on productive communication, trust development, problem-solving, collaboration, and goal setting are ideal ways to learn and achieve. These experiences create lasting impressions where the lessons learned and changes in behavior are real and long-lasting due to the “hands-on” nature of the learning.
Some of the experiences we provide at our Empower facilities or with our Mobile Training Team include:
EMERGE Youth Leadership
A single day experience for youth groups – focused on foundational leadership, community/team building, and problem solving skill development.
EMERGE Team Building
A single day experience for adult groups – focused on relationship and trust development, productive communication, and collaboration.
EMERGE Sports Leadership
A single day experience for athletic teams – focused on the importance of goal clarity, role performance, productive communication, and controlling the controllable.
EMERGE University Leadership
A single day experience for college/university groups – focused on the exploring personal leadership styles while appreciating unique differences in other’s leadership qualities.
EMERGE Plus
Multiple engagements during which Empower delivers a comprehensive training through iterative initiatives, reflections, and team achievement action planning.
Transitional Programs
Experiential programs designed to ease the stress of transitioning (middle to high school, high school to college, professional) through leadership and relationship development experiences.
After-School Enrichment
Designed to support youth organizations and the children they serve during after-school hours with engaging leadership and team building enrichment experiences.
Challenge Adventures
A customized experience full of team building and spirited competitive fun! Includes competitive team building challenges and the crowning of your Empower Challenge Champion.
SOAR Adventures
Taking place at one of the Empower Adventures locations, the Soar experience includes the perfect blend of Emerge programming and aerial adventure excitement.
ACCOMPLISHING THE GOALS
Whether you are an individual or a group, engaging in experiential learning can help to create improvement toward goal achievement by way of using analytical skills to decipher which behaviors may work and which might not. This process helps participants gain a better and more personal understanding of the new knowledge; leading to greater retention and a better chance to apply this new knowledge towards efforts to accomplish the goal.