Abstract:

Experiential learning is defined as the active engagement of students in opportunities to learn through doing and reflection on those activities, which empowers them to apply their theoretical knowledge to practical endeavours in a multitude of settings inside and outside the classroom” (Moon, 2004). According to this definition, learning is based on practical experiences and the learning process can be moved outside the classroom.

From this perspective, learning allows us to build knowledge from the concrete (observing phenomena) to the abstract (understanding the principles or theories that are derived from the observation of this phenomena) (Kolb, 1984).

In this case, Environmental Sciences students who attended the subject “Solid urban Waste Management” at the University of Granada were guided to carry out different activities during their daily life. The goal was to catch their attention and stimulate their curiosity. In the classroom, they listened about the problems caused by the huge amount of waste generated all around the world and about the costs required for waste sorting and management. However, they didn´t realise about the seriousness of these problems until they were asked to analyse their own waste generation. During one week, they separated each fraction at home (organic matter, plastics, paper and glass) and they weighted them. By dividing the weight among the family members, they calculated the production rate, measured in kg/person·d. After calculating these rates, they realised about how much waste we produce every day at home and they started to think about how they could reduce it. Conclusions from this activity were very interesting as their awareness about environmental problems caused by waste generation significantly increasedafter analysing their own experience. As they were Environmental Sciences students, they were pretty sure about the fact that they did not generate so much waste.

Other experiential activities were: counting the steps from home to the nearest container or between two containers in order to evaluate if these distances were in agreement with those recommended by the Spanish Government; analysing the containers that they found in the street: type of container, materials, availability for different waste fractions, sensors, capacity, etc. or measuring the time that the garbage collection truck spent when collecting each type of container. All these data were later discussed in the classroom, so promoting their active participation.

These proposed activities based on exploring the reality increased their feelings of responsibility and sensitivity about environmental issues and improved their interest in the subject contents. Moreover, they promoted better environmental practices in their immediate surroundings, reflected their experience on their family and friends and developed important skills related to analytical and reflective thinking and problem-solving capacity within real-life scenarios (Fettahhoglu and Aydogdu, 2020). Some sentences of our students during the discussion sessions were: “Now, I am walking by the street and I am looking at every container” or “During my holidays, I have been checking the waste collecting system and comparing it with the one observed in my home city”. These students started to ask themselves about these issues and they found the applicability of the concepts explained in the classroom and their learning process was more motivating and effective.

Keywords:

Experiential learning, Environmental Sciences, outdoor learning, waste management.