TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ON INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INTO CLASSROOMS TO DEVELOP STUDENTS’ EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS

The skills gap is a noticeable issue in many countries, including Vietnam, a developing nation in Asia, where intellectual knowledge gaining seems to be a dominating objective of undergraduate students. To equip students with necessary practical skills for work after graduation, new courses have been developed at a language university in Vietnam. The courses are Presentation Skills, Intercultural Communication and Conflict Resolution, English for Career Development, and English for Business and Entrepreneurship. All the courses are taught in English and teachers apply Kolb's experiential learning cycle model to develop activities in these classes. The study describes this application and investigates lecturers’ experience in integrating experiential learning into their classrooms to find out benefits and challenges of this process, especially when the teachers were trying to develop students’ employability skills - an important goal of the courses. Analysis of qualitative data from interviews with nine lecturers showed that teachers used a wide variety of experiential learning activities to motivate students as well as assist them to gain knowledge and practical skills. Moreover, with these activities, students were believed to develop important employability skills such as sense making, collaboration or communication skills. The findings suggest that experiential learning is a promising approach to equip students with employability skills before graduation and getting ready for future work.