S1E4: The Experience Effect Live Launch Panel with Wendy Robinson, Charlotte Haigh and Grace Cuthbert

WEBVTT
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So I see experiential learning as a real enabler here
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at Leeds. It enables us to articulate the
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Leeds curriculum and allowing students to bring their lived experience into
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that as well so that they really feel like they're part of
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the Leeds curriculum. I think there's a really important idea
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that actually all of our students, regardless of their backgrounds,
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regardless of what's going on in their lives, in their working lives,
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in their caring lives, and all of that, have a properly thought-through
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programmatic approach to that kind of experiential
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learning. And the experiential learning is about the
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development of those transferable skills. So I
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think experiential learning is almost a necessity in
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learning moving forward because it's something that can't be replicated.
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Hello and welcome back to The Experience Effect, the University of Leeds podcast
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dedicated to showcasing the joys of experiential learning in higher education at Leeds
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and beyond. We're your hosts Anna and Imogen, and in
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today's episode we're officially launching The Experience Effect podcast
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at the Experiential Learning Showcase 2026 hosted at the
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University of Leeds Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall.
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In this episode, we'll be speaking to our live panel made up
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of Professor Wendy Robinson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Student Education
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and Experience, Professor Charlotte Haigh, Dean for Student Education,
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and Grace Cuthbert, a 3rd-year student of BA Global Creative Industries.
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We discuss each guest's journey with experiential learning how
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experiential learning is vital in deepening subject knowledge,
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and the importance of embedding experiential learning within the curriculum to ensure
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quality, innovation, and diverse learning experiences.
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Welcome to the podcast, Wendy, Charlotte, and Grace, and welcome to our live audience.
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Before we get started, can you please introduce yourselves to our audience? Wendy, would you
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like to go first? Uh, hello, it's great to be here, delighted to
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be taking part in this podcast. So my name is Wendy Robinson.
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And I'm the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Student Education and
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Experience here at Leeds University. I very,
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very recently joined the university, about 9 days ago,
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so when I talk about my experiences of experiential learning,
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I might be drawing on experiences I've had from my own education
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and from other places that I've worked, but I know that there's some fantastic work
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going on at Leeds, and we've been hearing about it in the conference
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here today. Hi, I'm Grace, I'm 22,
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and I'm graduating tomorrow with a first-class honours,
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woo, in BA Global Creative Industries in the School of
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Performance and Cultural Industries. And over the past 3 years,
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I've had the opportunity to take part in multiple experiential
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learning projects, which has been massive for my degree
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and my experience at university. So looking forward to sharing my student
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perspective in this panel today, so thanks for having me. Hi everyone,
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my name is Charlotte Haig. I'm a professor in physiology education but
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also Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enhancement and Student Experience,
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and thank you very much for inviting me today. It's a pleasure to be here,
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and hopefully I can bring some examples of experiential
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learning from my teaching and also from my role as
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Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor in how
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we've developed experiential learning over the last few years here at
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the university. We are here today to launch a new podcast series
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which aims to celebrate the joy and impact of experiential learning.
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So to begin with, could you tell us about your own firsthand experience
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personally or on the students and colleagues you've worked with?
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So, um, I've been thinking about this and I've taken my memory
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back to about 35 years ago when I know many
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of you in the room would not have even been born.
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But this was the beginning of my career really as an
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academic historian of education. And it was
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1991 and I'd just completed my undergraduate studies
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at Cambridge and was going off to study for
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a master's in history of education at what's now called UCL
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in London. And part of that master's programme was
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really training me how to do the
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work that historians do, i.e., doing firsthand
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historical documentary research. And the business of doing that,
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and in London, was learning how to work in big
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libraries, how to access materials and resources.
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And my tutor, who was a very famous historian of education,
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no longer with us, physically took me to the
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British Library And we set out with him
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saying, Wendy, this is what you want to study. I wanted to study a particular
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form of secondary education for girls at the time called higher grade
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schools. And so he took me and literally walked
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me through from walking through the door to getting
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my pass to how do I actually use the catalogue. In those
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days they weren't online, the catalogues, they were, they were little box
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catalogues. How to use the catalogues, how to make
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searches, how to then ask for the materials,
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and then when we've got the materials, how we then start working through it.
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And I think that was a very powerful experience for me, and it's one which
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I replicated with, with my own PhD students much later
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in my career, where that whole business of physically taking someone,
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being with them on site, showing them, very powerful for me
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as a very kind of early career historian of education.
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So for me, I think experiential learning was kind of
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the pivotal shift from moving from A-levels where it
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was much just learning from a book into putting
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ideas into practice in different modules throughout university.
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So probably the 3 main experiences that
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I've had through that was in second year where we did a consultancy
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project pitching to external businesses, which I then
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have continued to have a relationship with now and do some
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freelance stuff for them. So that was just amazing to have the opportunity in first
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year, but then also actually the act of
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pitching to them, but about something that we
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then continue to work on rather than just writing
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like in an assignment, yeah, was super
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engaging. And I'd say the biggest impact it's had is giving
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me confidence in my abilities past just my
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academic abilities in writing and in assignments.
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So basically developing my skill set and abilities beyond the lecture hall,
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and I've also had an opportunity to do that through my dissertation, doing— putting
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on an event in a practice-based dissertation, and also through
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digital marketing, things like actually running a social
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media account rather than just learning the theory. It was one of the
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things I've done this year over 9 months, which was great, and at the
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end of it I had things to show for it rather than just a mark.
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So yeah, for me I'd say the biggest impact experiential learning has given
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me is confidence in my abilities past just the
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academic sense. That's lovely to hear from students, definitely. Thank you for
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sharing that, Grace. So from my experience, I'm from a science discipline,
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so I'm very fortunate that much of our teaching is very much experiential-based.
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So lab practicals, our final year projects, our capstone projects are
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very much about immersing students in that experience of what
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they might go on to in industry. But I'm going to give you an example
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of a discovery module that I've led for a number of years So
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I'm really interested in engaging the public with science and
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really inspiring young children, adults, and seeing the
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value of the science and the research that we do at university.
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So I developed a module in which I got colleagues
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from across the university to come and showcase a piece of
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their research that they conducted here at Leeds, because I found that our students were
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particularly were able to articulate the research that was going on
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in the same institution in which they are studying.
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And then I asked them to create a public engagement project.
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Now, this was a bid for a public engagement project, so they had to
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design the project and sort of bid for the money to enable them to
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do that if it was in a real-world scenario.
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So I think this was a great example of experiential learning.
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Students were using their knowledge that they gained from this research,
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then applying the skills that they'd learnt throughout the module to
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produce this funding bid for public— for the public engagement
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project. We invited external speakers in who do this as a job
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every day, people who work in medical communications, people working communications
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around sustainability and the environment, which really
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sort of was lightbulb moments for students to say, actually, I can use my discipline-level
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degree in communicating effectively to others. We gave
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them a choice, or I gave them a choice, of different types of assessments,
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which I'd like to say were authentic assessments. Students could
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choose from doing a standard grant proposal bid in order to communicate
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their public engagement activity, or they could
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choose to record themselves doing an elevator pitch around that
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and answer some interview questions, or produce a PebblePad
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portfolio with embedded resources to really bring that public engagement project
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to life. We had some excellent submissions over the last few
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years. We had a student who'd taken some dementia research and
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put a bid for funding to do a TikTok campaign to get old people
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doing dance moves that they could replicate in order to build their memory,
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which was absolutely fantastic. And the impact of this
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is students still have to be asking for references for
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these types of jobs. But it's when the employability manager in my faculty
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once came up and, like, touched me on the shoulder and went, what are you
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doing in that module? The students in the mock interviews
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for placements, for opportunities post-graduation,
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are using that as a really clear example of how they're demonstrating,
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articulating, and being assessed on their skills. So for me,
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just doing that module that was open to all university students from
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any discipline really engage them in that experiential way without
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too much hard work, and I think that's something that has something to say for
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itself. Excellent, thanks for those answers. So we hear
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a lot about the changing future of work in the news and media at the
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moment, and it seems that one of the primary roles of the university at this
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time needs to be to prepare students for uncertain and precarious futures.
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What do you think the role of experiential learning could be in facing that challenge?
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Wendy, would you like to begin? Yeah, I mean, I think Experiential learning is
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about really helping students learn not as passive
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learners, but as being very much owners of their own learning
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in a real-world context. And I think, as Charlotte's just described,
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there can be quite specific subject discipline-related skills,
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and I think Grace talked about those as well. But I think sometimes we
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underestimate what are sometimes called soft skills,
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but, you know, the communication skills, the ability to work
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in teams, to communicate in very different ways. And Grace,
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you talked about your sort of social media platform that you worked on.
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So I think that what we need to do in universities is make sure
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that our students have a very strong disciplinary foundation,
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and there's all sorts of different types of learning that can place— take place in
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in that way, but that what we need to do— Charlotte mentioned authentic
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assessment, and that's a way of us understanding that we want to
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test students' knowledge, their experience, the way they're developing
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their skills and their confidence in ways that they will
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hopefully use when they leave university and enter the world of work.
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And that will be about being able to communicate effectively
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to different audiences in different ways. It will be able to
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sort of problem-solve. It will be able to think a little bit outside
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the box. So as we think as educators about designing our
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learning, we're trying to develop very particular
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disciplinary subject knowledge and understanding. That's really important.
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We want that. But we also want to develop a host of other skills that
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sometimes we don't really get hold of. And so we need to make
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sure that students understand that these are really important. And they are skills that they're
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developing through their experiences in experiential learning.
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Yeah, so obviously, well, speaking from personal experience,
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the graduate job market is obviously massively
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competitive now and also just constantly changing,
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and it feels like employers are looking for more than just a
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degree. They want evidence and they want experience. And experiential learning
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gives students the opportunity to learn these skills through doing,
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and like I've said, build confidence. But it also means that
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you graduate with concrete examples that you can use in things like interviews.
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Like you spoke about, it gives you things to put
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on your CV more than just your qualifications. It's probably one of the
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things I'm most grateful for my degree, in that it helped me feel
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prepared without the necessary internships, although obviously
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that's very helpful. It made me feel prepared through just the academic
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course that I had multiple projects that I could put on
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my CV that didn't even necessarily look
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like they were something that I took through university because they
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were like external projects that were just enabled through university.
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So I think it, for students, it helps bridge the gap between university and
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employment but it also gives context to the knowledge that you
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gain through learning in a more evidenced
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way that you can actually talk about and tell stories in your interviews rather than
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referring back to written assignments, which isn't as compelling,
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let's say. Well, I don't know whether I'm going to add much to that because
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I think you've both said everything, but I'd just acknowledge that we're
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not just training university students to succeed in their academic studies.
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That's really important that we do that, but we want them to prepare for their
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future career, and that future career could be anything, not always discipline-specific.
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So we have to be able to give the students experiences
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in which they can practice and assess their skills that go beyond that discipline
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level of study. I think, and the way that we
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need to continue to develop as an institution is is to
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think about how we not only engage with our students as they're coming in and
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work in a co-creation way with the students to make sure
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that they're getting what they want out of their degree, but also at the other
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end, work with key employers and think about what their challenges
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are right now. We know their challenges, as ours are, is how we
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work with generative AI, but we need to learn together in that
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space and be prepared to listen and learn with our students
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and our employers. And I think that will then give the confidence to
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parents and supporters who are working with
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their, their children to think about what degrees mean for
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them and why they should do one and why they're important, that we can keep
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reflecting on that and building on that, ensuring that our students
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are employable in that really challenging graduate employment market when
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they walk away from Leeds. Absolutely. Experiential learning is not
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just about preparing students for their future working lives.
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It can also play a powerful role in enriching and deepening
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subject learning while helping students recognize the value of
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their knowledge across different contexts. So Grace,
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can you think of any examples where engaging in experiential learning
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enhanced or deepened your understanding of a particular topic?
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Yeah, so, um, the one that stands out for me is for my dissertation.
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Like I mentioned, I chose the practice based option where me and
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a group of people put on an event and then we collected data
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from the event which we then analysed and wrote a smaller dissertation on.
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So the actual event wasn't marked but it was something that you chose to do
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for experience, like this is all about,
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and my dissertation was on understanding what made culture
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and creative experiences meaningful and valuable for Gen Z and before
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actually putting on the event I had very broad understanding
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of all the theoretical concepts and theories from
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reading for my literature review, but it wasn't until actually putting on
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the event that I saw how the
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decisions and the event design influenced how people experienced
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the event, and it actually kind of mapped out the theories in
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a much more comprehensive way, which gave me a much deeper
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understanding had I just been thinking about it, but I could actually see step by
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step through the experience and through the event that I had put on what people
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got out of it. So how it panned out in real
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life. So it made things— made it much easier to understand why
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things happened and how things had happened. So it just
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gave me a much more comprehensive understanding of the topics really that I was writing
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about, which I don't think I would have got if we hadn't have put
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on the event and we had just been at an event and collected the data.
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And to Wendy and Charlotte, how would you describe the relationship between
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experiential learning and the Leeds curriculum? And thinking more broadly,
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how would you like experiential learning to be understood and experienced here
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at Leeds? So I see experiential learning
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as a real enabler here at Leeds. It enables us to articulate
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the Leeds Curriculum. So for those that are unfamiliar, the Leeds Curriculum is
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all about your course, your future, our world, aimed at
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the students so they can really see the value of their course,
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how it is really giving them the skills and the attributes to
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be able to take that into their future and make that impact globally
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if they choose to work in that sphere. So I think it really enables
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us to do that and enables academics to think about how to bring that
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to life for our students, and allowing students
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to bring their lived experience into that as well, so that they
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really feel like they're part of the Leeds curriculum
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here. So I think it's a really powerful enabler,
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and we've got so many resources and so much support to
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enable programmes and programme leaders to work on that
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now and really think where is the best place within their curriculum to
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offer students those experiential learning opportunities. And as
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I mentioned, I've only very recently joined the university and I'm coming up to
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speed on the fabulous work that's gone into the Leeds curriculum.
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I think what Charlotte's just described about experiential learning
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as an enabler, I think the other really important thing is that the Leeds curriculum
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is embedding so that this is something that all students will
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experience regardless of which programme they're on is
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embedding some of these kind of values and principles about that
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lived experience. And it's not just about the relationship between
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theory and practice, it's not just about kind of having
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that real-world experience, but it's about thinking through the
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whole journey of the learning, through the assessment,
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through, you know, application, through looking ahead. So students
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will be being invited to reflect on that lived
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experience, to think about how they're conceptualising
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some of the ideas. And I think Grace described that really well when she talked
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about that theory-practice divide and application. And if I may,
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I'll just reflect on my previous 2 institutions,
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which— where there was a development of what I think was a very powerful experiential
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learning opportunity. Both, both of these institutions had large law
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schools and both of them developed very innovative,
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quite sector-leading law clinics where
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the students would be out in the community, in the
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law courts, in the city with a clinic working
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alongside experienced solicitors to
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provide free pro bono confidential advice
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to the communities that the university served. And that wasn't
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just a kind of extra tick box exercise,
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and certainly in my previous institution there was some real thought given
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to how the experience of being out in the community offering
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the kind of legal clinics to the local community whether that
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be in housing, whether it be in family law, whether it be in all sorts
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of other kind of issues, financial issues,
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that the students— that was embedded into their programme. It wasn't
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just an extra, it was something that the students experienced,
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then they would come back to the university, they would get supervision,
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they would work together to reflect on that experience, and then they
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would reflect and write reflective writing. And as
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part of that experience, they were kind of practicing some of the theory they
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were hearing about in the lecture theatre. And I think the Law Clinic
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is a really exciting model of what experiential
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learning could look like, where also the university is
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demonstrating to employers and to communities that it serves
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just how kind of, how relevant a university
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education can be. Can I just add something to that,
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if you don't mind? I was just thinking about how much more engaging experiential learning
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teaching and modules are, and you can
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see that by the number of students that turn up to your modules when it's
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got experiential learning as part of it. They can see a real reason for being
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there and engaging in the live session rather than just listening to
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it online and things afterwards. So I would really advocate for these sort of experiences
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to be in the curriculum because it does drive that student engagement.
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And to build on those ideas, one of the core drivers for our project
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at Leeds has been to work on how we embed experiential learning into the curriculum.
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Why do you think it is important for students and educators that we make time
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in the curriculum for experiential learning? I mean, I think
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it's very important that from a kind of equity perspective,
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that often in the past experiential learning or kind
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of the kind of lived experiences have often been extras.
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And there have been long debates in higher education about,
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you know, how students can engage with and access what
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might have in the past been considered, you know, a nice-to-have
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or an additional or something you do kind of extra.
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To the main curriculum. So I think there's a really important idea that
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actually all of our students, regardless of their backgrounds,
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regardless of what's going on in their lives, in their working lives,
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in their caring lives, and all of that, have a properly thought-through
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programmatic approach to that kind of experiential
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learning. And the experiential learning is about the development
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of those transferable skills. It's about thinking about the
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thinking skills that you need to reflect, to conceptualise,
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to apply. And so for us, and I know Charlotte has
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been closer to this in Curriculum Redefined, but it is about making
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sure that this is for all students. It's not just for those who've
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got the time at weekends to do things or the time to volunteer,
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however good that might be. This is something that we think is so important that
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it's actually got to be— it's not extra, it's part of,
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and we embrace it as the holistic experience.
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Yeah, I completely agree. And from a student perspective,
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I'm just going to touch on— I know you mentioned AI,
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but I think that experiential learning is even more important with
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accessibility of AI. Definitely being a student over the
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past 3 years when AI has become a tool that
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wasn't ever really used before, I think in the future universities
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are definitely, well, probably already thinking about how students
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are going to learn differently and demonstrate their understanding.
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And I think practical experiences, like you said, encourage students to actively
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engage rather than passively learn, but also require collaboration,
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reflection, and like practical decision-making.
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So I think experiential learning can— is almost a
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necessity in learning moving forward because it's
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something that can't be replicated with ChatGPT,
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for example. So yeah, I think it's something that can complement technological
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change as everybody learns how to deal with AI and
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use it as a tool rather than competing with it. Yeah, can I echo some
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things that Grace said there? The human skills side of it is really important.
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That's something that generative AI can't mimic at the moment,
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is the human skills. And I think experiential learning really helps
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us to develop those human skills whilst they're
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at university. I just wanted to answer this question around a quote
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that I heard at a recent conference that I really like and I will probably
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use a lot. Apologies, colleagues. But it's— we
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have to think about training students for their futures,
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not our past. And I think that's really powerful. We had a
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degree experience, but things have moved on and things have changed, and we have to
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move with that. And we have to think about who the students are that are
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walking through our door and work with them to get the best for them.
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And I do think, as I said before, that experiential learning is
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an enabler for that. But also it's really fun,
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you know, being an educator, engaging. And okay, it has its challenges,
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we know that. We're sometimes a little bit nervous if we don't know what's going
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to happen in the classroom when we do these sort of activities. But it's
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fun and the students get it and they see it and they see the benefits
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from it. And I think having that, those two-way conversations,
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those discussions, and students really understanding why you're putting
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experiential learning into their curriculum really does empower them,
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and that's why I'm a massive advocate. The impact of experiential learning
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on students' identities, their sense of belonging,
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and their understanding of themselves as learners is well documented
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in the research literature. Thinking about your own experience,
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does this resonate with you? And do you feel that
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experiential learning can create opportunities for a genuine student-centered
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learning experience? If so, what do
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you think needs to be in place to ensure all the
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students are properly supported and able to thrive?
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That's quite a big question. I'm probably not going to fully answer it,
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but I think I'll touch on something that I talked about earlier.
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I think we've heard from lots of student panels in our Student Education
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Conference about their experience here at Leeds, and what
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many of them say that they value is bringing themselves here as
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that individual in whatever form that may be and
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bringing their lived experience. And I do feel that many
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of our activities that are aligned with experiential learning allow them
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to do that and bring themselves. And when they do that, we see that
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they have that stronger sense of belonging to their course, to their module,
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to their peers, because it's allowing them to interact in an authentic
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way in which they would do outside of the university.
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So, and I think then that helps them grow in confidence,
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that then when we are asking them to go out, or that they're going out
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and trying to find graduate employment and jobs, they have that confidence that they've
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had some of that experience before and really can draw
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on that as examples of building the skills that are
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required to be successful in those types of jobs. And can
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I just add to that? I mean, I think in bringing themselves and
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building that confidence, that sometimes means really being pushed out of
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your comfort zone. So, you know, for example,
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I've certainly taught sessions where I've tried to do simulations and
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tried to set up scenarios where I'm asking students to
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kind of act and do role play. Now, some people, you know,
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they want to run for the hills when they're asked to do that and they
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need a bit of practice. So I think there is, and sometimes those experiences of
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being pushed out of your comfort zone actually do help create
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and gel a sense of community amongst the group of students
29:33.260 --> 29:36.780
because some other people might be more comfortable and might support
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and help people. I was with a group of students who
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were on a study abroad programme in Malaysia last year.
29:44.860 --> 29:47.850
I happened to be there doing some work with my university.
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And I had the privilege of spending the day with this
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group of students who were really out of their comfort zone because we were
29:56.570 --> 30:02.650
taken on a trip to a local
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community project in a very, very impoverished part
30:07.610 --> 30:11.370
of the city where the university and the students in
30:11.450 --> 30:15.770
that university were working on various projects with nurseries,
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with schools, with healthcare. And the students I was with,
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they had the opportunity to see that work, but be in
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the place, be part of the place, and spend
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the day with actually some kindergarten students.
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And they were able to talk to them, to talk to the teachers, and it
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was challenging. Because we were seeing things that,
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that were not part of our normal experience,
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and that they were the experience of the people in that community we were
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part of. And we weren't there kind of as if we were in a zoo,
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we were there to understand and observe and reflect
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critically. So I think being taken out of your comfort zone,
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you know, and going and studying abroad is a really good example
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if you, if students get that opportunity, not everyone can, but I think
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going out of your comfort zone and being prepared to do that,
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it's an amazing skill to take with you into
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the world beyond university, as Charlotte says, because you've got the confidence,
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you know that, you know, the world isn't going to fall apart if you're
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being tested in a different way. And in regards to the student-centred
31:25.710 --> 31:28.830
part of the question, I completely agree that experiential
31:29.150 --> 31:33.220
learning is paramount to the students
31:33.460 --> 31:36.660
being centered in the learning, mostly because
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it shifts students from— well, it's definitely shifted me
31:40.820 --> 31:44.420
from being like a passive learner to an active participant, but it
31:44.500 --> 31:48.340
also gave people different ways to excel like
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on and off paper. So people
31:52.740 --> 31:57.160
who are less confident academically, I think it's really important giving given
31:58.280 --> 32:02.760
experiential learning a chance to do in practice what some
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people necessarily can't communicate on paper.
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And also students, you get to see the impact of what you're doing. Like for
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my event for my dissertation, as well as how
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rewarding it was, we raised over £2,000 for charity. So that's just like another
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thing you can add on to it. But then also the reflection
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part of it, which I think you mentioned before, is definitely a core
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part of it, which I don't think you necessarily get in other
32:29.730 --> 32:33.490
types of learning because it's much easier to reflect on
32:34.130 --> 32:38.050
something that you've actively done than something you've
32:38.550 --> 32:41.650
learned in a lecture hall because you don't have like the act
32:41.730 --> 32:46.050
of doing it. So yeah, I'm also definitely a massive advocate for
32:46.210 --> 32:49.710
experiential learning, and throughout my degree I've had so many fellow students
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and friends when we've been talking about what we're actually getting up to in our
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degree, be extremely jealous, but also just
32:57.330 --> 33:00.670
say, wow, that sounds so helpful and so amazing, I wish my course
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did something like that. That kind of prepares you for the world of work,
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but also helps you build soft skills, but also practical, like,
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transferable skills for the workplace. Yeah,
33:12.190 --> 33:15.390
number one, it's just so much easier to engage students when they're
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in the centre of learning and actively participating.
33:19.680 --> 33:22.480
Well, that brings us to the end of our discussion. A huge thank you to
33:22.980 --> 33:25.520
our panel for your contributions and to our live audience for listening.
33:25.680 --> 33:29.680
Thanks. Thanks for
33:29.760 --> 33:33.600
listening to the live launch of the Experience Effect podcast, where our panel
33:33.840 --> 33:37.360
members Wendy, Charlotte, and Grace offered their fascinating perspectives
33:37.520 --> 33:41.360
on the necessity of experiential learning in contemporary higher education.
33:41.950 --> 33:43.230
Thanks, and see you next time!