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Experiential learning for engineering education: a school reconstruction project in Sichuan after the 5.12 earthquake

This paper presents elements of the experiential learning in engineering education through a real-life project case. The project included a team of university students from Hong Kong traveling to Sichuan, China and implementing various engineering systems from solar energy to e-learning systems for a reconstructed school in Sichuan, which was destroyed by the 5.12 Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Some successful factors for the process of experiential learning are also described. The cycles of experiential learning proposed by Kolb was introduced and fitted into different teams in this project. Students applied their knowledge to design the prototypes, acted and built the system, observed and evaluated their performance and conceptualized their experience into knowledge. Besides the successful factors, the weaknesses of experiential learning and how the project team minimized the impacts of the weaknesses were also described.