1. Open Educational Resources: Creating Open Educational Resources is a great way to embed experiential learning (and authentic assessment) into a course. You can read some examples of this in practice on the below Teaching Matters blog posts from the Outreach Course at the School of GeoSciences:

• Open Education Resources (OERs) from the School of Geosciences: The unforeseen benefits
• GeoScience Outreach Course: Assessment through impactful student projects
• Teaching volcanoes: the Geoscience Outreach and Engagement course
• GeoScience Outreach: teaching science communication ‘beyond the programme’ and outside of the ‘Ivory Tower’ 

2. Take your teaching outside:

• David A. G. Clarke offers Nine tips for learning in outdoor places and spaces, which include planning your route, designing for small and large groups, and considering issues of safety and equality.
• Walking courses are a creative and engaging way to connect students with their city, and the rich histories and narratives of Edinburgh. Course examples include:
  • Creating Edinburgh: The Interdisciplinary City: An Edinburgh Futures Institute course developed by Dr David Overend, offering students opportunities to actively engage with the contemporary city as a site for new ideas, designs, and methods, by bringing together students from across the University to work together in interdisciplinary teams.
  • Curious Edinburgh: An app-based walking tour which showcases the many buildings and places in the city of Edinburgh which are connected to the history of science, technology and medicine.
  • A local alternative to field courses: Dr Dan Swanton describes an alternative course that blends digital learning and guided walks through Edinburgh, with a postcard-based assessment task.

3. Living labs

Treating the University as a Living Lab means using our in-house academic expertise and knowledge to influence our operations, while at the same time providing a test-bed opportunity for academics and students to get real-world data for their research. Read more about living labs in the Department of Social Responsibility and Sustainability.

Experiential education: Defining features for curriculum and pedagogy: A research-based, theoretical framework of experiential education that is centred around six defining features: continuity, authenticity, agency, emotional engagement, support and reflection. Created by colleagues in Outdoor Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport.

The 10 Commandments of Experiential Learning: A short 'Inside Higher Ed' article by Jay Roberts and Anna Welton, who have identified some key foundational elements of experiential learning.

Enabling staff-student co-creation of experiential learning at scale: THE Campus blog post by Prof Simon Riley and Gavin McCabe, who share a reflective learning and assessment framework for staff and students to co-create experiential learning that is scalable and effective.