What is Experiential Learning?

As college graduates are increasingly expected to enter the workforce with job-ready skills, experiential learning is becoming increasingly more prevalent with competitive higher education programs. This active, engaged, hands-on form of learning is an educational model that allows students to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to complex, multifaceted real-world challenges that don’t necessarily have only one correct answer. 

CapSource is on a mission to help schools around the globe increase the quality and scale of the industry-integrated project-based experiential learning programs that they offer. Through our software and services, CapSource helps educators integrate real-world business leaders and their company challenges directly into the education process through carefully designed research-oriented collaborations. 

After successfully implementing over 200 engagements with 50+ institutions using help from 180+ companies over the past two years, the CapSource team officially defined our experiential learning model so that we could better replicate success:

Experiential learning is a form of active/applied learning that results in reference-worthy work experience that can be added to the résumé and discussed during interviews.

Through CapSource engagements, students practice using key universal skills like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity in addition to relevant tools and technical skills in order to develop real outcomes for real stakeholders who provide meaningful and actionable feedback along the way.

As a result, students gain résumé-worthy experience since they're working with real companies, in real business functions, on real challenges that have real stakes.

Below we’ve taken the time to break down each of these components of the CapSource experiential learning framework in order to help students, educators, and host company partners better understand the purpose of using real-world projects as part of the learning process...

Using & Honing Universal Skills

Experiential learning fosters the universal “4 C’s” of "soft skills" as defined by the National Education Association: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.

These four crucial skills categories are cornerstones of success in modern world because it leads to efficiency and productivity for teams and organizations. Without these skills, individuals find it inherently challenging to operate in a interconnected, collaborative company structure and team environment. To help prepare students for their lives after school, it’s crucial that students practice and ultimately graduate with an understanding of how each of these skills governs their interactions with colleagues, customers, superiors, and subordinates. 

Communication 

Communication encompasses a variety of listening, verbal, and written skills used to articulate thoughts and ideas. Communication skills require the use of different types of media, from email to video, and also draw upon cross-cultural competencies. With most jobs in the U.S. economy focusing on service-oriented industries, communication is highly important for career success. Students who work on CapSource projects must communicate with their groups, their faculty members, and representatives from their host company in order to succeed. The better the communication throughout the engagement, the better outcomes for all parties.

==> Read more about Boosting Student COMMUNICATION through experiential learning. 

Collaboration 

Collaboration, or the ability to work well with others, is an essential skill in the 21st century workforce, especially with increased globalization. Collaboration brings together multiple perspectives and skills, ultimately leading to stronger project results. Collaboration and communication are strongly linked in CapSource projects, since collaborating with project groups requires clear communication and teamwork in order to deliver successful outcomes.

==> Read more about Boosting Student COLLABORATION through experiential learning. 

Critical Thinking 

Critical thinking refers to the ability to use different types of reasoning, such as deductive and inductive, to make decisions and solve problems that don’t only have one clear answer. Critical thinking is a priority in all job functions, across all industries and typically becomes a main differentiator for career success. CapSource projects involve understanding and solving business challenges, which requires students to first comprehend the business context before going on to propose reasonable solutions for real-world challenges. Critical thinking plays a key role in the ability to break down large, complex, multifaceted challenges into bite-sized nuggets that can be addressed and resolved piece-by-piece.

==> Read more about Boosting Student CRITICAL THINKING through experiential learning. 

Creativity

Creativity isn’t about how artistic a student can be. Rather, creativity is about innovating and developing new ideas, and then bringing those ideas into fruition. CapSource students must harness creativity at every stage of the project, from brainstorming ideas to iterating solutions. Creativity relies heavily on the other three C’s because turning ideas into action requires communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. As students come up with new ideas and cooperate as they try and reason through challenges, they’re able to flex their creative muscles and better understand how thinking creatively can result in positive outcomes for their group and the external stakeholders they’re working with.

==> Read more about Boosting Student CREATIVITY through experiential learning. 

Using Relevant Tools & Technical Skills

Beyond using "soft skills," experiential learning engagements require students to go beyond theory and apply what they've learned using relevant tools and technical skills. Real-world collaborations can cover a wide range of topics, from STEM, to business, to liberal arts. Each project requires that students use unique and relevant tools in order to succeed. Whether the tools are designed to enhance collaboration or build more meaningful outcomes, students get a chance to practice using these important tools with the help and guidance of faculty and industry experts. In addition, students get a chance to hone their technical craft and build technical experience. Soft skills may be important in preparing students to enter the working world, but empowering students to hone unique, valuable technical skills is what helps them succeed in their role and grow within their organization. 

Developing Real Outcomes

To help students hone these universal skills and technical capabilities, CapSource works with educators, students, and host companies to create projects that matter. Students who undertake experiential learning projects through CapSource are given business challenges based on real pain points for their host company. The solutions that students come up are real, action-worthy outcomes, such as marketing plans, go-to-market strategies, product roadmaps, data visualization dashboards, and useful financial projections.

Working with Real Stakeholders

The projects that our students work on involve real company stakeholders as mentors, who are often accomplished business executives and entrepreneurs. These stakeholders are eager to listen to students’ perspectives on the challenges that their company is facing in order to gain a fresh perspective. With CapSource learning engagements, these stakeholders are involved throughout the project, from the initial briefing and check-ins to the final presentations.

Getting Real Feedback

Since experiential learning projects involve real companies and challenges, the feedback that students receive from faculty members, company stakeholders, and each other helps to point out professional strengths and weaknesses, all in a safe classroom environment. With CapSource projects, feedback can be given in-person and/or processed through surveys and grading rubrics with scores for different skills. We highly recommend taking a look at our article about How to Grade Project-Based Experiential Learning Collaborations if you’re interested in delving deeper into the metrics that matter and the mechanisms that can be used to assess student performance.

Gaining Reference-Worthy Work Experience

Through CapSource engagements, educators are able to offer their students hands-on collaborations that allow them to gain real work experience while enrolled as a student. In fact, some students who have undertaken experiential learning projects through CapSource have become interns or full-time employees at the host company they worked with. Regardless of direct employment outcomes, students undertaking CapSource projects engage with key stakeholders who are expecting real outcomes, resulting in lifelong lessons and memorable, reference-worthy experiences that can be added to the résumé and talked about on interviews. 

Real Companies 

Each CapSource project involves real stakeholders from real companies, including startups, local businesses, non-profits, government entities, and large corporations. Our approach is to help prospective host companies quickly learn of the benefits and requirements of collaborating so we can convince them to get involved in the education process. CapSource maintains an active directory of host companies eager to collaborate through experiential learning engagements. These companies vary greatly in size, location, and industry and the projects that students complete can have a significant impact on company growth and direction. 

Real Functions 

CapSource breaks down each project into 19 relevant business functions in order to easily tie real business challenges to academic disciplines. Through CapSource experiential learning engagements, students are typically exposed to multifaceted challenges including multiple departments within a business, which requires taking an interdisciplinary approach to solving business challenges. Some of the most common business functions are marketing, product development, growth strategy, and data management.

Real Challenges

CapSource’s experiential learning formats offer educators a variety of customizable ways to challenge students by leveraging real-world third-party host organizations as part of the education process. The engagements can be short one-day Site Visits, Capstone group projects, Live Business Case large-scale class projects, or individual student Co-Op Career Boosters. Common business challenges include the development of a board member on-boarding process and materials package, the assembly of financial statements and projections for startups, the proposal of new products with a go-to-market strategy, and a deep dive on industry and competition.

Real Stakes 

The best part of experiential learning projects is that all players have skin in the game. Unlike a case study from a textbook, the stakes in an experiential learning project are real. One of our clients, Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, sources over 50 companies for 1-week on-site Capstone Projects each year for their MBAs. Each of the projects, ranging in topics from marketing and talent management to data analysis and financial planning,have real stakes that enable students to feel accomplished and hone skills since there's real pressure to make a real impact and solve real problems. You can see examples of Notre Dame's MBA Interterm Projects on this page, including three with HUNGRY Marketplace, one of our longest running project partners.

Organizing and Scaling Experiential Learning Programs

CapSource is dedicated to helping schools better organize and coordinate industry-integrated experiential learning programs. We offer a suite of software and services that makes finding companies and defining projects easier than ever before. 

If you wish to centralize and scale your experiential learning process, we recommend that you explore the CapSource CONNECT Platform, which is a customizable way to build and track your own companies and projects. 

If you need help sourcing companies and designing projects, please check out our Sourcing and Design Service, which matches companies with programs based on narrow academic requirements.

If you’re a company interested in working with schools and their students through experiential learning engagements geared to benefit your business, you can learn moreor create a profile today!