The Importance of Experiential Activities for Students: A case of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract

Experiential learning is a process that begins with practice, experimentation, and then the learner analyzes and reflects on the experience and the results of that experience. This process helps students consolidate knowledge, form and develop new competencies, skills, behaviors, and even new ways of thinking. This approach is considered to have many advantages compared to the traditional educational method. This research is completed based on analysis and assessment from survey activities and understanding the study habits of students, and the teaching methods of elementary, middle and high school teachers in Ho Chi Minh City. Through research, some schools in the city are still teaching and learning by traditional methods, the experiential activities alternating with classroom lessons are still rather new. Most of the students feel quite boring and monotonous when every day when they come to class, they listen to lectures, copy lessons, return lessons without any experiential activities. The inclusion of practical activities in the above lessons is very necessary to change the atmosphere in the classroom as well as help students to absorb knowledge in an intuitive and vivid way. And this research shows the benefits of practical experiences for learning and teaching in schools today. Methods of face-to-face interviews and questionnaires were used and then analyzed using a fivepoint Likert scale. The research results confirm the role of experiential teaching and clarify the question of how to help improve the quality of teaching in today's smart and modern society.