WINNIPEG, MB – University of Winnipeg students are experiencing some unique hands-on opportunities this academic year with the support of an innovative Experiential Learning Fund – they will be kayaking, traveling to Greece and Serbia on archaeological excavations, participating in local Indigenous ceremonies and building Roman artillery. Eleven projects on campus have received funds totaling $30,000 to facilitate experiential learning.
One of the original projects is entitled the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, developed by the department of Urban and Inner City Studies. The focus is on engaging insiders (those incarcerated) and outsiders (university students) in a classroom inside prison walls. This pilot project, to be offered in May-June 2014, will engage students currently taking courses at UWinnipeg with a group of women incarcerated at the Women’s Correctional Centre in Headingly. It will provide students with invaluable real-world experience and the opportunity to dialogue on social justice issues relevant to the inner city. The overall approach respects that everyone is a teacher, everyone is a learner and that learning is communal – we create knowledge together.
“We recognize that today’s careers are complex and students want exposure to multiple ways of learning, and our faculty members are actively creating those options,” said President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Lloyd Axworthy. “Students who combine hands-on, applied training with critical thinking are well-positioned to take on multiple challenges and leadership roles, whatever field they enter.”
UWinnipeg’s Experiential Learning Fund was established by the President’s Office in 2012 as a $15,000 fund, now doubled to $30,000,specifically to encourage more for-credit hands-on opportunities. Experiential learning uses participants’ own experience, activity, and reflection, rather than only lecture and theory, as the means of generating understanding and transferring skills and knowledge. It is an umbrella term often used to describe service learning, practicum experiences, internships and fieldwork.
See PROJECTS FUNDED FOR 2013-2014 – backgrounder
MEDIA CONTACT
Diane Poulin, Senior Communications Specialist, The University of Winnipeg
P: 204.988.7135, E: d.poulin@uwinnipeg.ca
