Structured experience: a risk-free approach to reality-based learning.

Abstract

The structured experience facilitated learning in an emotionally charged situation by reducing risk factors and the participants' anxieties. It also facilitated discussing and sharing ideas and feelings. The simple format of the Land of Suria enabled not only health care deliverers or students but also experts to learn at their levels of awareness. The learners were able to transfer the knowledge gained from the structured experience to real-life situations. The writer believes that the structured experience can be utilized as a risk-free method of learning prior to potential anxiety-producing situations (i.e., C.C.U., acute psychiatric crises, transcultural situations, etc.) and that the resulting knowledge can be effectively transferred to anxiety-producing, real-life situations. The structured experience is not open-ended for the students to totally define out of their own experience. It is structured to include content and process which the instructor deems valuable. Specific nursing situations can be designed with outcomes predictable within a given range of behaviors. Many variables determine choices of nurses' behaviors, and the structured experience allows the student to bring past learning to the situation and examine what they did, how they did it, why they did it, and how they feel about it. Because the structured experience is learning that encompasses both the cognitive and affective domain, it has the potential of greater impact upon the learner and a greater potential for transfer and retention.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)