Benefits of Utilizing Experiential Learning in a Medical School Cancer Survivorship Course

Kolb's experiential learning theory emphasizes that effective learning occurs through repeated cycles of a concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. We evaluated this framework in a 15-week cancer survivorship selective with nine medical and three premedical students. Weekly sessions, co-led by the course facilitator and invited guests, paired in-class experiences with reflective homework assignments which tasked learners to develop new concepts in 4 domains: patients/survivors (PS), caregivers' issues (CI), illness experience (IE), and interprofessional care (IPC). Students shared their concepts in the subsequent class and applied them in their next Kolb's cycle. They generated 278 new concepts during the course (PS: 76, CI: 53, IE: 59, and IPC: 90) and applied, on average, ten self-developed concepts on their final assignment. On the immediate post-course survey, 12/12 (100%) students rated the course, and 9/12 students (75%) rated the Kolb's cycle elements within it as extremely/mostly helpful. One year later, all 9 medical students responded to a follow-up survey on the impact of the course on clinical encounters during clerkships. Here, students reported that the course had a significant, lasting impact on their understanding of survivorship issues (7/9) and overall patient management (7/9), with qualitative comments noting a greater understanding of longitudinal survivorship care, holistic awareness, the importance of interprofessional and coordinated care, and improved clinical awareness and communication. Overall, Kolb's experiential learning framework was well-received, enabled learners to effectively develop and apply their own survivorship-related concepts, and showed lasting effect after students transitioned to clinical clerkships.