A Review of Scholarship on Assessing Experiential Learning Effectiveness

This article focuses on the research and scholarship dealing with the assessment of the experiential approach in both its computer-based and human-based forms. It covers two forms of assessment. First it covers explicit attempts to assess the validity of experiential learning, and second it focuses on measuring the effectiveness of the experiential approach. The authors classify the literature on both validity and measurement into critiques and prescriptions for ideal research on one hand and empirical research studies on the other. The empirical research reviewed supports the notion that experiential learning is effective. However, the studies showing these results reflect a long-standing trend of not meeting the highest of research design and measurement standards. Thus, the authors believe any conclusion about the effectiveness of these teaching approaches must be tentative.