The current enthusiasm generated for virtual reality seems to have lost all sense of trying to achieve the ultimate experience: Experience of the Real World! So I would like to offer some suggestions for conducting courses with real-life inputs that engender enthusiastic participation and bring about meaningful experiences leading to active implementation in the real world.

In the 1960s, Professor Reg Revans, a remarkable practitioner-academic based in the Manchester College of Science and Technology, took on the UK business school community and lost. Experienced in working in mines and hospitals then, he proposed mutually supportive management methods to tackle local troubles. Because he heavily criticised existing business management schools for trying to teach management in the classroom instead of on the job, his ideas were thrown out as they were thought to divide the faculty (Revans, 1980). The lucrative MBA courses that were emerging at the time meant big money and status to those running them and adopting so-called action learning programmes at the work place were considered to be a poor substitute. The professor left for Belgium where he received more enthusiastic support for his ideas and worked there for ten years in exile.

Today, the concepts of action learning, as defined in the paper ‘Putting Action Learning into Action’ (Boddy, 1981), are conducted all over the world. The idea is simple. The formula for learning that Revans provided for is as follows:

Learning = programmed learning
(books, lectures, tutorials, etc.)
+ questions + ACTION + reflection

In this model, questions about real live issues are discussed in groups and must lead to something being done. Subsequently, the group must follow through with an assessment of the effectiveness of those actions.

In other words, run a workshop at the workplace involving real people with real problems and get the group to come up with action proposals that will solve them. Different character and personality backgrounds, levels of expertise and education, lengths of experience and familiarity with different aspects of the company’s activities combine to solve a problem. Feedback often shows that problems more often arise from attitudes (rather than technical constraints) and from specialist behavioural beliefs and values (rather than market forces). Group dynamics can assist in identifying problems within a different context and engendering ownership responsibilities sufficient to solve them.

What has the above got to do with real-life learning in the university? Well, the principle of interaction with real problems on a multi-disciplinary basis in a hands-on situation can increase stimulation and motivation sufficient to implant learning that leads to active implementation. Such principles can be incorporated into any academic courses so as to make them more practice-based and aligned with what is actually going on in the real world.

Ask any of your ex-students what they remember most about their undergraduate days and they will inevitably cite some practical experience derived from skills training in the field site, an outside visit or a practical laboratory experiment they conducted themselves. Alternatively, they may recall an eccentric practitioner who shared his real-life work, a weekend retreat or an overseas trip designed to gain actual hands-on experiences. Rarely will they recollect the details of any indoor weekly lecture or the drudgery of sit-down, inwardly digesting tutorial presentations. In other words, real-life experience made more impact, put things into perspective, made students feel, smell and hear the sights and sounds of life and positively react to them. Try as we may, the virtual experiences of computer simulations or the interactive events of campus-based life will never entirely fulfil the human senses and instil new innovative learning paradigms like the real thing in the outside world.

Most staff would admit that voluntary participation in tutorials is very weak amongst many of our local students. Questions asked are usually minimal, reactions limited and visible stimulation low. The reasons are all too familiar: lack of confidence, face saving, insufficient prior knowledge of the subject, inappropriate seating arrangements, excessive domination by the tutor, lack of interest, calculative minimal involvement, risk aversion, means-to-an-end strategy, etc.

Having suffered through all these problems over the last fifteen years, I have devised a number of strategies that I would like to share with you:

• Minimise your classroom-style tutorials and avoid holding regular, repetitive-style events each week. In lieu of classroom tutorials, organise project briefings with small groups (of not more than six students) in your office, or encourage students to consult with other staff from other faculties and with external consultants.
  
• Inject variety into your programme by organising competitive discussions, consultant workshops, site visits, weekend field trips, outside speaker seminars, student one-day conferences, integrated projects, computer simulation games exercises, video sessions, etc.
  
• Avoid asking direct questions of large groups. Instead, encourage students to actively involve themselves in small groups so that you can interact with each group as they participate in projects. Never give any lectures in tutorials.
  
• Get the students to run their own tutorials. Keep your intervention to a minimum.
  
• Present your own case studies based on current research and encourage students to assess and comment on these studies.
  
• Set exercises designed to evaluate completed practical work by using an assessment checklist. In my case, I run a review process on the quality of Environmental Impact Statements and students are encouraged to assess these in small groups and compare them.
  
• Set project work based on real-life problems in society that are topical. Test students on their creative and participative skills. Devise ways in which one project can lead into another so as to utilise material already collated.
  
• Encourage good initiative and devise peer assessment methods that students can get involved in. Give immediate feedback to project work submitted and discuss directly with the students.
  
• In cross-faculty elective modules, select groups comprising international and cross-faculty students. Such a multi-faceted mixture often leads to increased self-learning from each other.

To illustrate how real-life learning was injected into a Fourth Year undergraduate, Environmental Studies course, a one-day/optional weekend site visit was arranged to the Banyan Tree Resort, Bintan, during which students were asked to evaluate for themselves whether the development was indeed an environmentally friendly response to resort design as it claims to be.

The objectives of this site visit were to gain:

• hands-on experience of a real-life development project in an ecologically sensitive area;
  
• first-hand accounts from practitioners (e.g. planners, designers, hotel management and maintenance personnel) about problems experienced and how they were resolved on-site;
  
• awareness of different types of environmental impacts that need to be considered and how each can be assessed through impact analysis;
  
• appreciation of users’ needs and how they were met;
  
• understanding of how local Bintan residents have benefited from such developments (e.g. increased employment opportunities, demand for locally produced food stuff and for the supply of local building materials);
  
• knowledge of how such developments affect the wider environment including an assessment of cumulative effects arising from other adjoining developments nearby.

Student feedback showed that they gained the following outcomes from this study:

• a very pleasant and fulfilling experience;
  
• an insight into the importance of minimising damage to existing fragile ecosystems through environmental planning, design and management processes;
  
• a broader appreciation of socio-cultural effects caused by such developments and the associated changes in lifestyle they might have for local residents;
  
• a practical demonstration of how one such development should not be considered in isolation but be seen as part of a country, regional or total global environment.

And for the few who stayed over the weekend, the relaxing and stimulating experience of being treated as special guests was a fitting end to a pleasant real-life experience not to be easily forgotten.

Essentially the philosophy associated with real-life learning is to make learning appear to be fun, yet demanding, and to be full of variety, but requiring a need to adopt a structured and organised approach. Making projects challenging and interesting encourages greater motivation. If you are worried about individual assessment, design three projects, one for individuals, the second for small two or three person groups, and the third for five to six person groups. Using a wide range of activities that are designed for the student to take an active role, to be fully involved and to get enthused through interaction with peers will hopefully reflect the experiences of the real world. It is perhaps pertinent to note that in the real world, the rate of learning must be equal to, or greater than, the rate of change (Garratt, 1997). After all it will not be long before students become real people who have to perform in the market.

References

Boddy, D. (1981). ‘Putting Action Learning into Action’. Journal of European Industrial Training/Human Resource Development. Vol. 5, No. 5, 1981. Bradford, West Yorkshire: MCB Publications Ltd. pp. 1–20.

Garratt, B. (1997). ‘The Power of Action Learning’. Action Learning in Practice (3rd ed). Pedlar, M. (ed.) Aldershot, UK: Gower Press. pp. 15–30.

Revans, R.W. (1980). Action Learning: New Techniques for Management. London: Blond and Briggs Ltd.