I am good at learning through reading, so when I am in a classroom, I prefer to listen and do. I remember attending a weeklong interactive farm business course. We were in the classroom in the mornings and out visiting farms in the afternoon. The speakers were good and had excellent worksheets for us to use. It was so frustrating, because the lectures were excellent and really got us thinking about our farm business and we were ready to dive into those worksheets and begin the process of positive change…but then we had to stop within 10-15 minutes each time so the next speaker could begin. I knew that we would not have time to work on those sheets when we got home, and it was so disappointing to lose all the creative ideas and momentum. What I learned from this experience, and what was once again emphasized when we met in person last week (but in a positive way), is that providing time for students to do some of their work in the classroom is crucial for fostering a deeper understanding of the topic, provides opportunities to ask questions and get assistance, and supports collaborative learning. This question and our experience during last week, come at a critical time when I am updating a 6-week course, and I plan to incorporate these lessons learned in my updated curriculum.

It was funny to see the "sage on the stage" phrase in the coursework here after recently hearing an instructor from a Cornell HR webinar let us know he didn't consider himself one. I think it was important to point out in a zoom chat filled with many accomplished working professionals. When we are school age children, our teachers take on more of the "sage" role because comparatively we knew very little about the world. The information exchange was much more of a one way street. This is vastly different than in an adult learning setting where the students undoubtably have a great deal of professional and life experience, as well as previous education on the subject matter that they can share with the group. I think opening things up to the group like this allows learners to be more engaged and challenge themselves to apply what is being discussed to their own personal experiences and not just try to be a sponge absorbing everything. This application of knowledge being taught is a key factor in our retention of what we learn. It moves us from a passive to active mindset.

Another impactful learning experience I've recently had was attending "Witness to Injustice" put on by NOON (Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation). This interactive experience used story telling to turn the classroom into a map and each learner into a representative of a North American tribe. By making everyone in the room a part of the retelling of history, it helped them personally connect to those who suffered the consequences of the Doctrine of Discovery and be engaged learners. I would highly recommend the program who anyone who has not yet experienced it (I saw Leigh there)!

As I was thinking about my experiences in some sort of 'classroom', I couldn't help but think about my own career as a teacher, before joining CCE/4-H. I always strived to create experiences where students felt heard, had a say in what was accomplished, had ownership over their learning, were inspired to take it further, etc. All of these practices made teaching more and more enjoyable, and rewarding at the same time.

Thinking about my experiences on the other side, as a learner, I reflect on a recent training I participated in, Youth Mental Health First Aid. The instructor created a space where we all felt like we were a very important piece of the puzzle. Everyone had a sense of belonging and purpose. I walked away from that training not only well informed, but inspired to continue learning and growing. Those types of experiences lead to greater outcomes and more impact!

A few years ago I was a guest faculty member with Bard College's Citizen Science Program - this is a required course for all first year students at Bard College, and focuses on developing science literacy with students. During our training for the course, myself and colleagues learned active teaching methods, and how active teaching differs from passive teaching. As part of this training we got to experience first-hand different active teaching methods (e.g. group work, think-pair-share) so that we could incorporate them into our delivery of the program. This was my first introduction into formally thinking about teaching and was a real eye opener - I suddenly realized why so many previous learning experiences throughout high school and college were so difficult for me, as they had often been delivered with a passive teaching approach (sage on the stage), and I think about this experience often as I develop programming for others. It was great to experience the training in this manner, essentially as students ourselves doing active learning, so that we could experience the effectiveness of the methods first hand, and then apply and hone them when delivering the course.

On a related note, I recently had to learn/teach myself a new style of guitar for some upcoming shows. I was able to do so by learning and practicing the basics at home by myself, and then applying these skills during full band rehearsals. I'm realizing now that this was a form of a "flipped classroom", a classic active learning strategy where students encounter information for the first time out of the classroom (e.g. learning the song chords), and then apply that information at a higher level in the classroom (e.g. playing the song musically in an ensemble). This would not have worked for example if I had spent rehearsal time teaching myself the basics (while my bandmates looked on and waited).

I learn best by doing and practicing, or if I can visualize a concept; I do not learn well through lectures or reading. A great example of this was one particular class I struggled with during my undergraduate years. I always earned pretty good grades, so it was very frustrating that this class just would not click with me. The class was presented as a lecture-style, but the professor in particular was hard for me to understand and often said the wrong thing and corrected himself later, which added to my confusion. This class included a separate laboratory component too, and I found that concepts would "click" more after having done the laboratory piece. Going through the labs was also a different way I could learn the material, as the lectures were not working for me.

It's interesting to think back on my teaching experiences too and how they have evolved too. The first time I "taught" was during also during my undergraduate years as a teaching assistant; this experience was very straight forward, as all of the information we were to teach was handed to us, so we did not need to create any type of lesson plan. It was not until I had to create my own lesson plans that I put more thought into who my audience is, what their needs are, and what prior knowledge they have. I like to include as much "doing" as I can when teaching, even if it's just asking the audience questions, because engagement is key for learning. If learners are not engaged, they are not likely to remember that information or take what they learned to apply to situations.

My degree is in Social Work, and I have my MSW, which has had me experience a variety of learning situations: lectures; online courses; internships. However, what helped me the most was role-play, as well as what is known as a process recording. For role-play, our class would break off into pairs, and role-play situations or conversations common between a counselor/social worker and client. A process recording is a written document, where once we interacted with real-life clients, we recorded our exact conversation, and then went line by line to analyze our statements, and reactions, and assign what our emotions were at the time, how we reacted to client's statements. Both of these exercises were helpful in learning how I formed my discussions with clients, how I was able to practice reacting to certain situations, and how best to manage my emotions in situations that were often very charged. I think that role-playing can be very instrumental in teaching situations, particularly when the task is to learn something that can be intimidating or emotional. I have participated in several role-playing exercises across my career, ranging from work with refugee populations to preparing for public speaking. I find it valuable to take time to practice, as well as look back on what could be done differently, and have found that the role-playing has influenced my work in 'real-life' for the positive.

During my MBA program I experienced the positive and negative situations described in the prompt.

On the negative side, I was required to take multiple microcredential courses, with the vast majority being noninteractive, hours long videos broken up into different sections. Admittedly, many of the topics were things I am interested in and wish I had retained the information. Unfortunately, the delivery was very boring and was not interactive so I honestly kept getting distracted and did the bare minimum to complete the courses (they were just pass/fail).

Conversely, during some of my actual classes we were required to learn programs such as Tableau and Power BI. In those classes we had instructional videos on how to use the program and then were given assignments to implement what we learned. The process of applying the lessons to real world examples moved the experience from teaching to learning. This process allowed for the information to be retained and provided me with new skills.

As a learner, I have found that when I can learn-by-doing, I feel more confident going forward. As a participant, I prefer when someone demonstrates how they do something, then have me try completing the action myself with their help. Part of my job is compiling expenses into a monthly invoice for our regional team, and when I took on that task, my supervisor showed me how the process worked, and then the next month I did the processing myself with his supervision, and after that I felt more confident to do it myself.

As an instructor, I have found that the group is more engaged when they can learn through experience, versus listening to a lecture. I wanted to present to my team about common errors I saw in our reporting, and with my supervisor's coaching, I switched from presenting the errors to them, to creating several fake reports with errors, and having the team work in pairs to find the errors, and then the group discussed the errors. I received positive feedback about the exercise, and learned to try to make future presentations more interactive, with quizzes and games when possible.

When I was child I attended sleepaway camp every summer for 2 weeks. Each summer we worked on a different service project and I distinctly remember two service projects; the playground by the lake and the building the handicapped accessible campsite. Both of these projects were strongly impactful on me because I left a lasting positive affect on the camp. The playground and campsite that we built are still there today! While doing these projects I was surrounded by my friends (fellow campers and counselors), I was able to use and practice using power tools and build confidence!

Both as a learner and instructor I have found commonalities that most groups connect with, a big one being that hands on experiences lead to more fulfillment and longer standing knowledge of the act that the individual or group was being taught.
As a learner - the more engaging whether its hands on or with visual pictures, the better I am at not only connecting and honing in on the meat of the topic, but also can retain the knowledge longer. I remember in a psychology class going over the same concept of myelin sheath that covers a neuron over and over in the text book before class. Reading it again and again I could only conceptualize this idea of what the words were explaining. Once in class and the instructor showed a photo reference of this "myelin sheath" acting in the same way that a aglet acts for the end of a shoelace protecting the exterior of the lace but still being able to see through is when it all clicked.

As an instructor- I try to remember concepts that work well for my learning as well as adding group activities - this way the learners get hands on experience but in the group there may be multiple ways of learning which can helps others in the group understand as well.

Such beautiful and rich responses here. Thank you all for sharing!!

In the classroom, I tend to thrive in an environment that is hands-on - be it physically hands on like - tours, doing something, or mentally hands on -- reflecting and writing. When I wrote this question originally, my visual for exceptional learning environment was the experience that I had as an undergraduate. I was a bio major - tended to love my coursework that was focussed on natural resources over human biology or cell biology....just felt more relevant to me, though initially I thought I'd end up doing something in medicine (because that was a career choice that I knew about). I spent part of a summer at Shoals Marine Lab (6 nautical miles off of the coast of Maine and NH). Everything was hands-on and because we were all there all the time - there was dialogue based learning happening perhaps not intentionally, but we were learning from one another and had access to the faculty all the time. Anyway - my career path didn't go in that direction but the concepts of what made the experience stick --- hands on, dialogue based, relevant experiences are etched in my mental notebook as "ways that I want to to teach and learn"

This immediately reminded me of a psychology professor I had during undergrad. At first, he seemed a bit unconventional. His teaching style was nothing like the traditional textbook or lesson plan approach. Instead, he would tell stories from his life that, at first, seemed completely unrelated to the course material. You’d find yourself wondering what he was rambling about, until he casually connected it back to that week's topic. I aced every exam (short answer) because I would recall the stories he told and I would be able to connect the story to what the question was asking.

One of the most impactful learning experiences I’ve had was during my training as a field inspector for ornamental trees. You can’t truly learn this work in a classroom or from a book. You need to be in the landscape, observing the tree and its context.
I had to consider everything: irrigation, soil conditions, recent imports, nutrient management — all the variables that could mimic or mask disease. The learning happened through doing, not just watching.
That fieldwork taught me not just to diagnose, but to think like a problem solver

I think some of the best learning experiences I have had is when a mentor asked me to walk them through the process as if I was explaining it or teaching it to them. By teaching the process or lab method you are required to know the process in much greater detail and forces you to share what you know (exposing things that you might not have considered yet). This teaching tool also allows the mentor to provide input on things you may have forgotten as you were explaining, which provides for immediate feedback and learning.