It’s no secret: Experiential learning helps your students master course concepts more effectively. When students apply new knowledge to real-world situations, they don’t just retain the material — they can use it, too!
That’s why one of the pillars of the Stukent® E3 Learning Experience is virtual work-integrated learning. The E3 Learning Experience provides a framework for Stukent Simternships™ and courseware. The learning model informs these instructional resources and provides educators with a roadmap for designing effective curricula.
Let’s explore how the E3 Learning Experience brings engaging, virtual work-integrated learning into your course!
The Benefits of Work-Integrated Learning
The E3 Learning Experience provides architecture for instruction that works. Stukent developed the learning experience and model with five best practices in mind.
The E3 Learning Experience:
1. Builds a comprehensive knowledge and skill base
2. Allows for just-in-time, experiential application of knowledge and skills
3. Includes deliberate, practiced activities that allow for productive failure
4. Is self-driven and self-relevant for learners
5. Is representative of an authentic work environment
Stukent Simternships and courseware employ these principles in each round or chapter. Specifically, Simternships mimic authentic work environments and professional roles. Students interact with simulated supervisors and coworkers, perform realistic tasks, and receive feedback on their performance.
Simternships make it easy to see how course concepts apply to the real world. If students find a course useful, interesting, or essential to their future careers, their motivation for learning will increase. It’s a phenomenon called task valuation, and educators can encourage it by showing students how their coursework is a literal investment in their futures.
Additionally, the virtual work-integrated learning in Stukent Simternships and courseware gives students equitable access to experiential learning opportunities. “Even if you have an ideal classroom where every student has the opportunity to pursue a traditional internship, [students] are all having unique experiences,” says Ann-Michelle Levangie, senior principal instructional designer for Stukent. “So, for an instructor to connect [students’] experiences directly to a curriculum is extraordinarily challenging.”
That’s what the E3 Learning Experience does — it ensures that you can give your students an equitable, engaging, and effective learning experience. Most features of Stukent Simternships and courseware are turnkey and auto-graded, too, which takes the pressure off you and your preparation time.
Want to read more about student motivation and task valuation? Explore The State of Experiential Learning and Higher Education 2024 Report from Stukent!
The Core Stages of E3: Engage, Enrich, Encode
The E3 Learning Experience formalizes the learning journey in Stukent Simternships and courseware in three stages: Engage, Enrich, and Encode.
But what does E3 look like in practice?
At its core, the E3 Learning Experience helps you immerse students in career-relevant activities. The Engage stage represents the knowledge acquisition process. These three steps communicate the course’s relevance to the learner, establish learning objectives, and present the core knowledge pathway.
Once learners are familiar with a concept, the Enrich stage connects real-world experiences to core instruction. In this stage, students put new knowledge to work in activities like Simternships, embedded activities in the courseware, and other experiential learning opportunities.
Prompt feedback is key in the Enrich stage, which is why many activities in Stukent Simternships and courseware feature auto-grading. Timely feedback prevents errors or misconceptions from being encoded in long-term memory.
The final stage of the E3 Learning Experience is Encode. In educational terms, encoding is the “process of taking information into our brain where it can be organized and stored” (Farthing, 2024). In the Encode stage, students transform new knowledge into real-world expertise through repeated practice in Simternships and courseware.
This is where Stukent Simternships really shine — unlike many simulations for business, marketing, or communication, Stukent Simternships offer students repeated practice. These simulations are meant to be played over the course of a term or semester, giving students ample opportunities to make mistakes, receive feedback, deepen their understanding, and build marketable skill sets.
Ann-Michelle says, “The Encode stage … is practiced, repeated experience. [It allows students] to fail in a low-stakes environment before they get to the assessment.”
When implemented together, the Engage, Enrich, and Encode stages help your students retain more information and master the skills they need for success.
A Final Note
In the E3 Learning Experience, “employability is just as much a focus as a good grade,” says Ann-Michelle. The Stukent instructional design team developed the model to support robust academic outcomes and student employability. “Students are investing in their future when they pay for a college education,” she says, “and they want to see how they’re going to get a return on that investment.”
By increasing student employability with a Simternship, you can help students capitalize on their investment.
Stukent Simternships and courseware provide your students with engaging, experiential learning opportunities. These resources use the E3 Learning Experience to help students be more engaged, more employable, and eventually, more effective in their future roles.
Why Stukent?
At Stukent, we’re helping instructors prepare students for successful careers in business, marketing, communication, and accounting. To read more about the affordances of Stukent Simternships and courseware, download The State of Experiential Learning and Higher Education 2024 Report from Stukent!
References
Farthing, J. (2024). Encoding: Something to remember about learning. Litmos. Retrieved August 8, 2024 from https://www.litmos.com/blog/articles/encoding-learning#:~:text=The%20process%20of%20taking%20information,better%20it’s%20received%2C%20or%20encoded.
Levangie, A. (2024). Introducing Stukent’s E3 Learning Experience. Stukent. Retrieved August 7, 2024 from https://www.stukent.com/profcon-2024-agenda/.
