Speakers
Description
Community-based experiential learning can provide students with the opportunity to engage with local communities during their program of study. Kolb’s experiential learning paradigm resonates with post-secondary students and community partners as experiential learning is not just recognized for the knowledge acquired through doing, but also its role in building participants’ confidence to learn in different settings, make critical connections to their curricula learning and recognize their role as partners in community engagement (Kolb 1984).
While the resources and relationships invested in university-community collaborations are extensive, we remain attentive to potential disconnect among stakeholders. Community partners, administrators and professors may be unaware of the responsibilities of a student-athlete and neglect to consider this in the design, supervision and evaluation of experiential learning placements. This gap can result in missed mutual learning opportunities, community development and networking and require the student to choose between university sport or an experiential learning placement. In this poster, we will share results from a qualitative open-ended online survey sent to uOttawa student-athletes who participated in a 4th year internship in the community or a sport-related organization. Research objectives are two-fold: 1) Identify opportunities and challenges for student-athletes who choose experiential learning placements, 2) Discuss student-identified recommendations to build their capacity as partners with community organizations to enhance mutual learning and engagement. Using a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2019), broad themes will be identified and interpreted within experiential learning theory, students as partners model (Healey & Harrington 2014) and situated in the literature.
