Experiential Education and the SDGs

SDGs Experiential Education (EE): is a pedagogical approach that involves “the application of theory to a concrete experience, either within the classroom or within the community, which advances the learning outcomes of a course or program and requires students to reflect upon their learning”. 

These concrete experiences are often designed to help students explore, connect with, and navigate the world beyond the classroom, encouraging them to make critical connections between what they’re learning and how these ideas might be applied to various contexts and challenges. When integrating the UN SDGs into your courses, facilitating concrete experiences where students can make meaningful contributions to these goals serves a dual purpose: an opportunity to be agents of positive change while engaging in structured, critical reflections to deepen their learning. 

These reflective exercises may help to surface important interconnections between the subject matter of the course and its wider applicability to supporting the SDGs, and meaningful engagement with a variety of community organizations & colleagues can build valuable partnerships where learning is a shared goal and progress toward the SDGs is a shared, reciprocal responsibility.