Experiential Versus Experience-Based Learning and Instruction

Abstract

This study tested claims about the superiority of experience-based over experiential approaches to teaching economic concepts. Students were randomly assigned to three groups–experience-dictation, experience-debriefing, and debriefing-only. At pretest and posttest, students were interviewed to probe their understanding of 10 basic economic concepts and to determine their proclivity to use the concept of cost-benefit analysis in a personal decision-making situation. Planned comparisons revealed the following statistically significant differences on the understanding-of-economic-concepts posttest: (a) the combined means of the experience-debriefing and debriefing-only groups were higher than the mean of the experience-dictation group and (b) the mean of the experience-debriefing group was higher than the mean of the debriefing-only group. No significant differences were found between groups on the use-of-cost benefit analysis measure. Overall, the findings support the superiority of experience-based instruction.