Using Reacting to the past Pedagogy to operationalise Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning

This was a very interactive workshop. The presenters talked about how they had introduced this with first years as a pilot to get students actively engaged in learning in the first term. This approach was developed by Mark Carnes at Barnard. Students are all given a time in history and roles and then they have to go away and undertake some research around the time and role play the scenarios which might be assembly’s approving motions, law trial etc. In order for us to be more aware we all took part in a shortened version of this in Greece around 430BC. It was interesting to note that none of us had spoken to each other before but pretty quickly got into our role and concentrated on our task. The two speakers sadly did not leave a lot of time at the end for discussion of the learning theory but did discuss how using this approach the range of styles were covered and for students who were usually introvert and would not speak out in class they could do this through their role. They also showed a video of students views of this approach and they were positive.