Exploring the Understanding of Experiential Learning Among the Faculty Members of a Higher Education Institution in Nepal

The purpose of this research is to understand the perception about experiential learning (EL) among the faculty members of a higher education institution in Nepal, its application in their teaching, research and community engagement initiatives, and factors enabling/constraining the implementation of EL practices in management and entrepreneurship education. Through this qualitative and exploratory research, we found that: (i) EL was most commonly defined in the form of ‘learning by doing through projects that are based on “real” problems’, (ii) faculty members’ understanding and application of EL can be explained by the rate in which they apply, reflect, re-configure and re-apply EL (being experiential themselves), and (iii) early adopters of EL attributed its application to the institutional strategy of developing “community-based” entrepreneurship education and the ‘evolved’ institutional culture that supported EL practices. Our findings also outline various individual, institutional, and structural factors enabling and/or constraining faculty member’s implementation of EL practices. Although this exploratory research lays out unique facets of EL practices in the context of a business school in Nepal, we strongly believe that it adds to the already evolving discourse of making higher education more relevant, effective, and efficient in addressing local challenges in countries like Nepal.