Learning Through Doing

“This has nothing to do with my life. I’ll never use this information,” grumbled my youngest son late one night while studying for a biology test. He may or may not be right, but his lamenting juxtaposed what I was hearing from the SLCC students I interviewed for the “Classrooms Without Walls” story in SLCC Magazine.

Each student could directly grasp how what they were learning now would be applicable to what they would be doing once they graduated. They were in programs where more than half of the instruction takes place in a lab, doing hands-on, active learning. The lab might be a garage, a plane hangar, a film set, a truck cab, a kitchen, among others.

Learning through doing is not only how many students learn best, for some it is the primary path to learning. One student explained that he just didn’t retain information without the hands-on part. Studies confirm that “active learning puts students in the driver’s seat of their lessons and deepens understanding.”

Deepening understanding through experience is at the core of a new, modernized business building that will be finished by 2026. This is the result of a $10 million dollar gift from the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation; the gift will catalyze a new Business Scholars Program where students’ projects will benefit communities, create incubators for student business ideas and launch service-based learning opportunities with non-profit organizations.

It sounds like more active learning, this time within the walls of a transformed business building. Read SLCC Magazine's newest issue and discover more about the active learning and innovative teaching that is taking place across the College’s campuses.

-Peta Owens-Liston, SLCC Magazine Managing Editor