Pixel International Conferences

The author has over 30 years experience in Industry and has been a Director of Constructionarium Scotland for almost 8 years delivering experiential learning to civil and structural engineers and students studying other areas of the built environment. The concept of turning theory into practice has led to ExpLearn and Concrete Scotland being formed 5 years ago to develop a secondary school vocational platform called “…in the Classroom” series which can be used to contextualise the participants learning into the world of work through five basic lessons culminating in a site visit to a relevant working environment. We shall look at actual projects that have delivered real Community and Social Engagement has been achieved by partnering secondary, Higher and Further education with Industry to deliver legacy within local communities. Even when working with disengaged low attainment pupils during the Octavian Program improvements were significant to the participants and assisted in delivering positive destinations to more than half of them. This program also won the Scottish Training Federation’s “Innovation in Training Award 2017” following on from being finalists the previous year for Concrete in the Classroom.The presentation shall look at the Year 1 delivery of the Erasmus+ funded PEETS project, Promoting Excellence in Employability and Transversal Skills where 39 multi lingual students from 3 European Universities came together over a 10 day intensive study period from non-construction backgrounds and over a 3 day period delivered a functioning windfarm generating energy and delivering on time and on budget project before looking at the handling a public enquiry into the viability of such a development. We look at the change process within the relevant participants when immersed into unfamiliar territory and how successful experiential learning requires to challenge all parties within a safe controlled environment.

Keywords: Experiential Learning; Contextualised; Immersive;