Cogent Education

Experiential Learning in STEM: From Experience to Learning and Impact

Cogent Education is pleased to welcome you to submit your research to the Article Collection "Experiential Learning in STEM: From Experience to Learning and Impact".

Experiential learning is an important component of STEM education, connecting disciplinary knowledge with authentic problems, professional practice, communities, and societal needs. Across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, students learn through projects, undergraduate research, design challenges, laboratories, makerspaces, community partnerships, industry projects, internships, simulations, and other settings that extend learning beyond traditional classroom instruction. These experiences can allow students to apply knowledge while also reflecting, collaborating, solving complex problems, engaging with stakeholders, and developing professional competencies. As experiential approaches expand across STEM disciplines and educational settings, there is a growing need to understand not only what forms these experiences take, but also the processes and conditions that shape meaningful learning.

Despite widespread adoption, important questions remain about how, why, for whom, and under what conditions experiential learning produces meaningful and lasting outcomes. Studies often emphasize whether an intervention works, with less attention to how students make meaning from experience, transfer learning across contexts, develop professionally, or learn through reflection, feedback, iteration, and productive struggle. Experiential learning can also affect people and organizations beyond individual students, including community and industry partners, educators, and institutions. Understanding reciprocity, ethics, sustainability, access, partnership quality, and broader societal impact is therefore important for both research and practice. This collection seeks scholarship that explains these processes and strengthens connections among experiential learning, educational design, professional preparation, and broader impact.

The collection welcomes empirical, theoretical, conceptual, and methodological scholarship on experiential learning across STEM disciplines and educational settings. Topics may include problem, project, design, and challenge based learning; undergraduate research; community engaged and service learning; internships and work integrated learning; industry partnerships; entrepreneurship; interdisciplinary learning; reflection and metacognition; teamwork, leadership, professional identity, persistence, and belonging; human centered design; sustainability; faculty development; program design; and institutionalization of experiential learning. We also welcome studies of technologies that enable or extend experiential learning, including generative AI, virtual and augmented reality, simulations, and digital twins, as well as authentic assessment and innovative methods for documenting learning. Research Articles and Review Articles that advance understanding of the processes, contexts, outcomes, and broader impacts of experiential STEM learning are particularly encouraged.

Meet the Guest Advisors

Dr. Aparajita Jaiswal is a Lecturer in the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program in the College of Engineering at Purdue University and a STEM education researcher. Her work focuses on experiential learning, community engaged engineering, Human AI interaction, and safety engineering education.

Dr. Bhavana Kotla is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and an instructor at the Department of Aviation at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on engineering and aviation education, entrepreneurial-minded learning, photovoice, experiential learning, and the integration of generative AI into teaching, learning, and assessment.

Dr. Tom Lucas is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Engineering Technology at Purdue University. His teaching and scholarship focus on engaging students in advanced manufacturing and helping them connect engineering learning with research and industry practice.

The Guest Advisors declare no conflict of interest regarding this work.