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ELI Impact Areas

The ELI impact areas were created as a result of a comprehensive literature review at the start of the initiative. Within each category, the assessment team identified several distinct competencies that align with these impacts. The outcomes of experiential learning include increasing students’ confidence and ability to:

  1. Innovate and take risks
    • Self-efficacy: belief in one’s own ability to perform well in a variety of circumstances
    • Resolve: ability to act despite uncertainty of success
    • Creativity: ability to sample ideas and retrieve or form unconventional knowledge
  2. Solve complex problems
    • Complex reasoning: ability to extend and refine knowledge by comparing, contrasting, abstracting
    • Incorporating perspectives: capacity to understand where others’ ideas come from and negotiate/apply perspectives
  3. Collaborate across differences
    • Communication skills: ability to effectively convey information to others
    • Cultural intelligence: ability to function effectively in culturally diverse contexts
    • Empathy: aptitude for understanding another person’s inner experiences and feelings
  4. Think critically and reflect on learning
    • Connecting theory to practice: competence in applying abstract ideas to connect situations
    • Reflection: capacity to intentionally explore and appraise experiences to create meaning for the benefit of learning

This set of competencies is not exhaustive. Through our work with experiential learning, DCAL intends to explore a wide range of strategies for enhancing student learning and development through experience and reflection across Dartmouth’s liberal arts education.

Which Impact Areas is your project focusing on? We recommend focusing on Think Critically and Reflect on Learning and at least one other one. Explain below.