I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, even if only to remind myself. The reason we have student organizations is, in part, to provide activities that student enjoy. But the bigger reason we have them is to help students learn, and in particular to learn to lead.

But how do students learn from their student organization experiences? Years ago, a psychologist named David Kolb advanced a theory of experiential learning that remains influential today. It’s pretty simple, really. There’s a cycle that starts with a concrete experience. After the experience, the learner pauses and reflects on the experience and makes a note of what they just did and what just happened. Out of that reflection comes new concepts or mini-theories, and those concepts or mini-theories then get tested in a new experience, starting the cycle over.

Let me illustrate. Imagine a student in a student organization is working on a team with a few other students. The team is stalled because of a conflict between two of the members. Our student takes the initiative to talk to each separately about how the conflict is derailing the project, and things get going again. That’s the concrete experience. If we’re lucky, or if we’re good at managing students’ experiences in student organizations, our student thinks about what happened, maybe noting what kinds of conversations they had, and how it resolved.

Out of this reflection comes a little theory (probably an implicit theory) that a good way to resolve conflict among team members is to talk to them individually. Finally, the next time our student is on a team stalled due to conflict between two members he or she can test the theory and start the cycle over.

The trick, then, to making student organization membership a powerful learning experience is encouraging that reflection step. It’s not always going to come naturally to students, but fortunately it’s not hard to instigate. Something as simple as a conversation will do it, and if we want many students to reflect, a little bit of guided writing, perhaps in a journal, will do the trick. We are trying a number of strategies to get more reflection into our work with students, not just in student organizations, but in all of our programs and services. As we learn more about what works, I’m optimistic that we will see our programs deliver even more learning than they already do. And in the end, that’s why we’re here.

How about you? Did you find the opportunity to reflect on your experiences when you were a student leader? What helped you reflect? And, what did you learn?

I always enjoy hearing from our former student leaders at thomas-rocklin@uiowa.edu.