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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between internships and Social and Emotional Competence (SEC). SEC was conceptualized as the combination of Emotional and Social Intelligence. Increasingly, areas of SEC have become the subject of research, because SEC enables people to use emotions advantageously to achieve desired outcomes. Measures of seven components of SEC (self-awareness, selfperception, self-regulation, self-motivation, self-ownership, empathy, and social awareness) were evaluated. Qualitative phone interviews were conducted with 21 undergraduate and graduate Communication students whom had recently served as interns. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Research questions sought to evaluate the effect of internships on (1) self-awareness and self-perception; (2) self-regulation and self-management; (3) self-motivation and career development; and (4) empathy, social awareness and relationship skills. The majority of subjects reported increases in all areas of SEC after the internship process. In addition, a formal survey of members of the Educators Academy of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) was conducted to compare internship guidelines by professors at other universities. Eleven professional educators responded. Results found that interns from University of the Pacific's Communication program were being held to the highest standard, in terms of supervision and guidance.

Service-learning, an experiential learning and teaching pedagogy, provides students and teachers the opportunity to take classroom knowledge and put it to work in real world applications in the greater community. This qualitative case study dissertation explored the expected and unexpected outcomes of a service-learning program at an urban charter high school. Through a review of current literature, the history of service-learning is traced from its modern roots to present day incarnations. Grounded in the overlapping frameworks of pragmatic constructivist theory and practice, and service-learning with a social justice model, best practices were examined through interviews and focus groups of current students and students who have completed the SL program. The findings to the three research questions suggested: The expected outcomes addressed activism, awareness, and social development; the unexpected outcomes spoke to the development of interpersonal transformations surpassing expectations and agency, unexpected contentbased outcomes, and unexpected abstract outcomes; the implementation data focused on the need for institutional support and adaptability. Recommendations for future implementation were also discussed.

Background: The Corporate Accelerator (CA) trend has extended beyond high technology industries, gaining global traction across a variety of industries, such as in finance, healthcare, insurance, entertainment and consumer packaged goods. CAs are described as an approach that bridges the gap between corporations and startups, further supporting long-term growth and corporate renewal. When organized effectively, CAs provide a platform that allows both the established corporations and startups to tap into the resources of what one has and the other lacks. Despite its’ many opportunities, some aspects of CAs have also been criticized. In particular, CAs aim to fulfill their corporation’s goals which may lead to discrepancies between the goals of the corporation and the startup. This could potentially limit the level of innovativeness of the startups as well as other learning benefits they aimed to achieve from taking part in the program. Purpose: From an entrepreneur’s point of view, this study aims to understand the learning experiences CA programs offer for participating startups. Method: An instrumental collective case study was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews from five cases that represented five different CA programs. Conclusion: This study aims to elaborate the existing CA literature through providing insights about how individuals in startups develop new knowledge through taking part in CA programs. The findings of this study suggest that three main factors affect the startup individuals learning experiences in CA programs that consist of; (1) The need for learning that is built upon the background attributes of each startup individual and the stage at which the startup organization is at; (2) The different entrepreneurial support activities that offer the startups authentic learning, generative learning and acquisitive learning opportunities; (3) The learning network offered during the program that consists of corporations, facilitator organizations and other startup organizations that enable the startup individuals to acquire complementary knowledge resources across their own organizational boundaries. Moreover, the findings of this study illustrate that experiences gained during the program are transformed into entrepreneurial knowledge that constitutes to the individual's ability to recognize new opportunities as well as the ability to cope with the liabilities of newness.

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Leaders’ individual transformative capabilities, qualities and skills are critical to the sustainable transformation in organisations. This exploratory research aims to explore the inspiration from the creative process of craftsmen to enable inner development of sustainable leaders for promoting sustainable transformation. Taking experiential learning as an intermediate factor, the thesis asks two research questions. 1) How does the creative process of craftsmen contribute to experiential learning?2) What is the implication of experiential learning to inner development of sustainable leaders? The frameworks of the creative process, the Inner Development Goals and the Experiential Learning Cycle are used to analyse the potential of experiential learning observed through the craftsman's creativity process to enable inner development of sustainable leaders. The research is led in two parts. The first part is an inductive empirical research based on semi-structured interviews with selected craftsmen to understand how craftsmen engage in experiential learning during their creative process. The second part of the research is a deductive theoretical analysis to understand how experiential learning can facilitate inner development of sustainable leaders. The results suggest that engaging in experiential learning through creative process is an innovative pers for sustainable leaders to develop individual transformative capabilities, skills, and competences for their inner development. Theoretical implications and practical recommendations are provided based on the findings of the research.

Youth-serving organizations, such as 4-H, place a large emphasis on positive youth development and experiential learning in order to assist youth in acquiring specific life skills. The literature suggests that residential summer camps are one of the best ways to provide positive youth development, experiential learning, and targeted life skills. This study was a mixed methods design which utilized four residential summer programs throughout the state of Mississippi in order to compare the differences between the residential 4-H summer programs that took place on a university campus to those that took place within the naturalistic environment. The results of this study indicate that on-campus residential summer programs achieved the essential elements of positive youth development more so than those that took place within the naturalistic environment. The on-campus program participants also acquired targeted life skills more so than those that participated in programs that took place within the naturalistic environment.

This thesis describes the research carried out to identify mechanisms as potential causes of action that can lead to improved learning outcomes. Identifying mechanisms requires an exploratory approach because mechanisms are not always directly perceivable. The potential mechanisms in this study were identified by analysing the reflections of students who participated in experiential learning projects during business process management education. The research was necessary due to a persistent need to minimise the gap between learning and practice. The research is unique because it takes a student-dominant approach to review students' reflective practices using a novel pragmatic-critical realist paradigm. Although reflection is central to experiential learning, there is limited understanding of how students reflect and what they consider to influence their learning outcomes. This limitation was explored using action research with mixed methods analysis which combined thematic analysis and partial least squares based structural equation modelling. During four action research cycles, student reflections on business process projects as part of higher education enterprise systems and business process management courses in a South African higher education institution were observed and analysed. Each action research cycle changed one aspect of the students' projects. The first intervention required students to reflect on action, the second required students to reflect in action, and the third required reflection for action. In the fourth cycle, the teaching staff changed. The findings showed that reflection is complex and must be linked to action to improve learning. Reflections were observed to positively influence learning outcomes when students apply effort to assigned tasks. On the basis of the observations, two models were proposed. The first model is a learning influence model embedded in the second disruptive learning model. The models show that reflective practices can improve learning outcomes by recognising that students learn at different levels but are predominantly absolutist. Students need to be inspired to apply effort in completing tasks and overcoming satisficing.

Abstract This master thesis is divided into two parts, one pedagogical and one engineering. The purpose of the pedagogical part of this master thesis was to investigate how students learn during projects. At the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, three larger student projects occurred where the students themselves developed an probe that was launched into the atmosphere. The supervisors of the projects wanted to find out how the students learn during the project. The thesis includes in-depth interviews with current and former university students. In order to compare and gain new perspectives on learning, the study also included interviews with high school students to identify their corresponding experiences of learning in their final projects in Swedish upper secondary school. The result from this study shows that the students learn through participating in activities, collaboration and communication. Giving the students responsibility, a mutual goal and an important assignment makes them collaborate and learn from experience through reflection. The purpose of the engineering part of this master thesis was to investigate samples that were collected during the Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study in the summer of 2008. The samples were studied by using a scanning electron microscope. The results of the thesis are consistent with former studies on samples collected in Arctic. The images from the microscope showed microgels and how the gels assembled into larger particles, particles which can play a crucial role in the formation of clouds.

Faculty who teach at the college level are often responsible for their own pedagogical training and development, and leading a short-term study abroad program may be one strategy for helping faculty with this development. This study explores the experiences of faculty who have led short-term study abroad programs and provides insight into how the experiences align with experiential learning models and ways that they can lead to pedagogical development. Nine faculty members were interviewed and asked questions about their teaching backgrounds, their introduction to study abroad, and their experiences related to teaching and learning while abroad. The findings show that faculty have opportunities for learning while leading programs abroad and that the learning opportunities could spur pedagogical change and improvement. To ensure that faculty learn from their experiences, they should progress through a formal experiential learning process that requires them to reflect on and conceptualize their experiences and then plan to implement changes. A model for guiding faculty through this process is proposed. Recognizing and reflecting on experiences leading programs abroad has the potential to impact faculty teaching, and a formalized experiential learning process will ensure that faculty fully realize the benefits of these experiences through improvements in their teaching.