Experiential Knowledge in Higher Education

About the project

Research shows that on average, every third student who enters a Higher Education programme does not finish it (Quinn, 2013; Vossensteyn et al., 2015). This is a major concern that leads to a waste of talents and money. There are indications that one of the important causes is a mismatch between the expectations and preferences of the student and the standardised nature of the programme (Gupta el al, 2018). Furthermore, research shows that students experience a lot of stress, because of the pressures of the study and the burden of study debts. General practitioners and student psychologists report that a growing number of students referred to them have complaints such as concentration problems, anxiety and depression. 25% of students are struggling with burnout, risky alcohol and drugs use, and suicidal thoughts (Lankhaar, 2019; Dopmeijer, 2018). Our ambition in this project is to contribute to a system where all students feel included and are more successful in terms of study satisfaction and graduation. We are convinced that in order to achieve this a more flexible and personalised approach is needed. This project focuses on social work and nursing curricula. In the helping professions, working with experiential knowledge is gaining increasing attention. Experiential knowledge is a concept in which the experiences of people related to trauma, illness, disability and the use of professional services are utilised as a source for learning, recovery and empowerment. Generally speaking, all people have personal experiences of a different kind. Learning from these experiences, students can employ these in their professional work. This fits perfectly with a personalised approach. Currently, curricula throughout Europe have difficulty integrating this source of knowledge in the programme, because clear frameworks and tools are missing. This project will therefore develop a comprehensive set of key principles, training programmes, didactical methods and a digital repository containing state-of-the-art resources. These project outputs can be used to innovate the curricula, embedded in a framework of flexible personalised education. This project proposal is timely when education structures need reviewing to move away from traditional structures to be more collaborative and inclusive of new and diverse perspectives