Experiential Knowledge in Higher Education

Research shows that every third student who enters a Higher Education programme does not finish it (Quinn, 2013; Vossensteyn et al., 2015). This is a concern that leads to a waste of talents and money. There are indications that an important cause is a mismatch between the expectations and preferences of the student and the standardised nature of the programme (Gupta el al, 2018). Furthermore, there is a growing number of students with complaints such as concentration problems, anxiety, and depression. (Lankhaar, 2019; Dopmeijer, 2018). Our ambition in this project was 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 a more personalised approach is needed, in which there is more attention to the personal experiences of students, and how these experiences can be turned into experiential knowledge. 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. Learning from these experiences, students can employ these in their professional work. This fits with a personalised approach.

This project wanted to create a cooperation partnership between twelve higher education institutes in 10 different countries, and their local partners, sharing and developing approaches of personalised learning and inclusive education, with an emphasis on experiential knowledge. We focused especially on bachelor and master programmes of social work and nursing, as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration in the field of social services and health care services. This project has developed 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.

The project implemented the following activities: • A structure for cooperation was created: digital and physical meetings, working groups, teaching and training, communication, and knowledge resources. • We used this structure for sharing and developing knowledge. We worked on different activities leading to the outcomes and outputs below. We did so by having transnational meetings, organising multiplier events, learning, teaching, and training events and working together on 7 work packages. • We strived to build a sustainable network, which can be continued after the project ends.

The project delivered the following results and outputs: • A strong cooperation partnership between twelve higher education institutes in 10 different countries. • A document describing the scientific foundation of experiential knowledge and ethical principles. • An organisational framework for the integration of experiential knowledge including an instrument which can be used to monitor implementation of experiential knowledge in educational institutions. • A collection of didactical and pedagogical methods. • A training programme for lecturers. • A toolkit to support people with service user experience acting as co-lecturers in the curricula. • Creation of a website that serves as a digital open-access platform containing information about the project, the collaborative partnership, giving access to all the project outputs, like educational programmes and toolkits.