How to make students industry-ready? This is one question that educators and educational institutions have been trying to find an answer to for many years now. The world is moving at a fast pace and what the industry requires from its professionals is also rapidly changing. To cope with this dynamic environment, the entire teaching and learning process has to be freshened up and restructured.
For a country as big and diverse as India, the change has to begin from the grass root levels and it would be wrong to think that some slight modifications in the later stages of a student’s academic life is going to do the job. There has been a lot of talk about experiential learning among the teaching fraternity in the country for some time now. Put in simple terms, experiential learning bridges the gap between classroom theory and its real-world applications. It empowers the students to think about both the theoretical and practical aspect of the concepts that they are studying about. The need of the hour is to introduce experiential learning into the student’s curriculum from an early stage onwards so that he or she is capable of understanding the real-life workplace scenarios and applications of the concepts that they are learning about.
Leadership and communication skills are two of the must have skills in order to achieve success in the highly competitive business environment and experiential learning nurtures these abilities in the students
Some of the various reasons why Indian education system should emphasize on experiential learning are given as follows.
- Brings in a Welcome Change: The Indian education system has been lagging behind for some time now and for generations the teaching models followed have mostly remained the same. The country can’t go on this same path if it wants to develop and experiential learning offers new alleyways of opportunities and possibilities that both the students and teachers can tap into. Treading in a different direction will freshen up the previously stagnant Indian education system which will help the country to overhaul its aged teaching pedagogies and policieswhile improving the overall learning experience for the students.
- Equipping the Students: As mentioned before, the world is now moving in a different direction and companies have started to look at how practically equipped the students are to meet and solve real-life business problems. Experiential learning will empower the students to not only be well versed theoretically but also be capable of putting those concepts into practice and formulating a solution for the problems that they are facing. This can massively help students to not only improve their employability but this will also allow them to be equipped with the needed skills in order to thrive in this fast-moving world.
- Improvements on Multiple Levels: This is one obvious reason why experiential learning is the way to go in the future. Leadership and communication skills are two of the must have skills in order to achieve success in the highly competitive business environment and experiential learning nurtures these abilities in the students which will also make them more confident to face future challenges. The ability to take initiative and express their thoughts and convey it to others will also help the students in both their personal and professional lives.
- Improves Student Engagement: What happens in most of the classrooms in India is one-way communication and over a period of time students generally lose interest in that monologue type of teaching. Experiential learning helps the teacher to get the interest and attention of the students which is key for creating a successful education system. Experiential learning allows the students to get much more involved in the learning process which will make them feel more curious and motivated to study properly. With this, the relationship between the student and teacher will also improve which will help the teacher to understand each individual student even more and help them to identify their true potential.
If India has any chance of competing with the best nations, then nurturing a young generation that understands how things happen in the professional realm is important. The introduction of experiential learning in India can bring on a multitude of positive changes in the country starting with the wholesome development of our students.
