Skip to main content

SEBS Criteria for Core Curriculum Certification of Experiential Learning

Note: As of August 17, 2022, “Experience-Based Education” has been renamed to “Experiential Learning”.

The Experience Based Education Core Curriculum requirement focuses on practical application of disciplinary knowledge. The learning goals are to examine and evaluate ideas within a discipline through an applied experience (e.g., professional practice, service learning, or research).

The SEBS faculty ratified the policy on April 2, 2015 and amended the policy on December 6, 2018.

Experiential Learning Policy:

The undergraduate program faculty are responsible for certification of experiences that fulfill the Experience‐Based Education Core Curriculum requirement for their programs. Certification of such experiences must incorporate the following guidelines and reporting requirements.

Experiences that fulfill Experiential Learning:

  1. Must be a Rutgers University credit‐bearing, graded course or internship such as Student to Professional Internship Network (SPIN) or combination of courses/internships totaling 3 credits.
  2. Must include as learning goals the development of problem solving skills; the ability to interpret data, information, and ideas; and must relate to the student’s academic program.
  3. Must, as a general guideline, be at least 112 hours of total work time (equivalent to a 3 credit course covering a 14 week semester). Deviations from guideline 3 must be justified.
  4. Must be approved by the advisor in consultation with the student prior to commencement of the experience. An agreement between the student and advisor is required that must be in the form of a learning contract that details the learning goals, provides a summary of the work that the student will be engaged in, the number of hours of work to be carried out, and a description of an evaluable report of the work (examples may include, but are not limited to, reports, papers, oral presentation or poster presentation).
  5. Must require the student to submit the report of the experience. The report must be evaluated by the course instructor, by the student’s faculty advisor or the supervisor directing the student’s Experience Based Education, or by the undergraduate program director.

In addition:

  1. Programs are responsible for keeping records of and assessing the effectiveness of their experience‐based education in relationship to the learning goals listed in provision 2.
  2. The program director is responsible for reporting the outcome of assessing the learning goals of experience‐based education in their program when so requested by the Academic Deans Office.