LEARNING ALIGNMENT WORKSHOP MODULE
Experiential & Curricular Alignment
What does the experience help learners develop—and how will anyone know? Connect internships, projects, clinical experiences, research, service learning, and other authentic experiences to curricular purpose and reviewed evidence.
Does this sound familiar?
Learners complete the hours, but the learning remains unclear
Participation is documented, yet the organization cannot explain what learners practiced, developed, or demonstrated.
Experiences vary without a clear shared learning purpose
Placements or projects offer different opportunities, making it difficult to identify which expectations every learner can meaningfully address.
The assigned work does not support the intended outcomes
A placement or project is associated with important capabilities, but learners spend much of their time on activities that do not develop them.
Supervisor feedback is difficult to interpret
Broad ratings such as “professional” or “excellent” provide limited detail about what the learner did, under what conditions, or with what support.
Reflection is collected without being connected to evidence
Learners describe what an experience meant to them, but the review does not clearly connect those insights to activities, decisions, feedback, or performance.
Valuable learning disappears after the experience ends
Projects, observations, and feedback remain scattered across systems or with external partners, leaving little usable context for later learning or learner profiles.
What are experiential and curricular alignment?
Experiential learning involves learning through purposeful engagement in activities and situations, supported by opportunities to interpret, receive feedback on, and build from the experience.
These experiences may include internships, projects, clinical activities, research, service learning, fieldwork, simulations, and other forms of authentic application.
Curricular alignment examines how those experiences contribute to the intended learning of a course or program.
A useful review connects the educational purpose to what learners actually do, the preparation they need, the responsibilities they hold, and the evidence available for review.
It also considers how experience connects back to academic concepts, further practice, and subsequent learning.
An experience may provide exposure, supported practice, or an opportunity to demonstrate performance. Those contributions should be made explicit so participation is interpreted appropriately.
The experience title does not explain its educational contribution.
“Internship,” “clinical experience,” “research project,” and “service learning” describe broad categories of activity.
Within each category, learners may encounter substantially different tasks, levels of responsibility, supervision, feedback, and opportunities to apply their learning.
To understand the curricular contribution, your team may need to connect:
- The purpose of the experience within the curriculum
- The outcomes or capabilities it should support
- The activities learners are expected to perform
- The opportunities the setting can realistically provide
- The learner’s responsibilities and individual contribution
- Preparation needed before participation
- The level of supervision and independence
- Opportunities for feedback and repeated practice
- Connections to concepts, methods, and prior learning
- Reflection and integration activities
- Evidence learners can appropriately produce or share
- Review criteria and reviewer responsibilities
- Differences across placements, projects, or sites
- Follow-up learning and improvement responsibilities
These connections help participants determine whether an experience supports its intended purpose and what would make that contribution clearer or stronger.
Connect the experience to the learning it is meant to support.
Curricular Purpose
Program and course outcomes
Relevant concepts and methods
Developmental stage
Purpose of the experience
Later learning connections
Authentic Activities
Assigned responsibilities
Tasks and decisions
Application opportunities
Individual contribution
Setting and constraints
Preparation and Support
Entry readiness
Orientation
Supervision
Feedback opportunities
Access to necessary resources
Evidence and Review
Work products
Observed performance
Learner explanations
Reflection and feedback
Review criteria
Integration and Next Steps
Learning connections
Remaining development needs
Further practice
Learner profile context
Experience improvement
The educational value becomes easier to explain when the organization can connect what learners were expected to develop, what they actually did, and what the reviewed evidence supports.
How an experience becomes disconnected from the curriculum
STAGE 1 — An opportunity is added
A program introduces a placement, project, or authentic experience to help learners apply and extend their learning.
STAGE 2 — Local activities take shape
Supervisors, partners, project teams, or site conditions determine much of the work learners encounter.
STAGE 3 — Completion becomes the easiest thing to record
Hours, attendance, submitted reflections, or general ratings become the main record of an experience whose learning contribution is more complex.
STAGE 4 — The connection becomes difficult to explain
The organization knows that learners participated but has limited evidence of how the experience supported curricular outcomes or prepared them for subsequent work.
“The learner completed the experience” leaves important questions open.
Completion confirms that specified participation or submission requirements were met.
Understanding the learning requires a closer examination of the activities, context, support, evidence, and review.
The review should clarify:
Identify the relevant curricular outcomes and the intended developmental contribution. Clarify whether the experience provides exposure, practice, integration, demonstration, or a combination.
Describe concrete activities and responsibilities. Examine whether the setting provides meaningful opportunities to address the intended outcomes and what happens when those opportunities are unavailable.
Identify the knowledge, methods, orientation, resources, supervision, and feedback needed for participation. Distinguish what learners should bring from what they are expected to develop during the experience.
Identify appropriate work products, observations, explanations, feedback, and reflection. Consider what can be retained or shared within the conditions of the experience.
Clarify the criteria, the people contributing observations, and the person responsible for the academic judgment. Identify what each source of evidence can support and where its limits lie.
Connect reviewed learning to subsequent courses, further practice, advising, or learner goals. Record what the experience revealed about both learner development and the design of the opportunity.
Examine the learning within the experience.
Purpose
Explain why the experience belongs in the curriculum and which outcomes it is intended to support.
Opportunity
Determine whether the setting gives learners a realistic opportunity to engage in the relevant activities.
Responsibility
Clarify what learners actually contribute, including decisions, tasks, collaboration, and the level of independence involved.
Support
Examine preparation, supervision, feedback, resources, and opportunities to improve through further practice.
Evidence
Identify what can appropriately show the learner’s activity, reasoning, performance, and development.
Integration
Connect the experience to concepts, prior learning, reflection, and the learner’s next developmental step.
Different experiences can support a shared purpose
Learners may work in different settings while addressing shared expectations through:
- Different projects or service contexts
- Different populations, organizations, or research questions
- Different tools and work processes
- Different forms of collaboration
- Different sequences of relevant activities
- Different work products demonstrating related learning
- Different challenges requiring comparable reasoning
- Different opportunities for additional learning
The review examines whether each experience offers a credible route to the intended curricular contribution.
Variation needs attention when the opportunity is missing
Closer review is needed when:
- A required outcome depends on an activity the learner never encounters
- Important responsibilities remain unavailable throughout the experience
- The learner mainly observes when practice is expected
- Independent performance is inferred from heavily supported work
- Group results obscure the learner’s contribution
- Feedback arrives too late to support improvement
- Necessary evidence cannot be reviewed through an appropriate alternative
- Completion requirements do not reveal a consequential learning gap
These signals help identify where the experience design, support, evidence, or interpretation needs attention.
An internship can satisfy the schedule while missing the learning purpose.
Imagine a program internship intended to develop a learner’s ability to investigate a problem, evaluate information, and propose a justified response.
One learner conducts an analysis and discusses recommendations with a supervisor. Another spends the placement maintaining records and observing meetings.
Both complete the required hours and receive positive feedback.
The review asks which activities supported the intended learning, what each learner was responsible for, and what evidence explains the difference.
Possible responses include clarifying the activity expectations with the partner, introducing an appropriate complementary project, improving feedback, or revising the placement’s stated curricular role.
The aim is to make the learning opportunity and the resulting judgment understandable before completion is treated as evidence of the intended outcome.
Reflection connects experience to learning when it has something specific to examine.
Reflection can help learners interpret an experience, connect it to concepts, examine decisions, and identify what they would do differently.
Useful prompts may ask learners to explain a particular action, compare an expectation with what occurred, interpret feedback, or connect an observed result to a relevant method.
A reflective account can reveal reasoning and meaning-making. A claim about practical performance may also require an observation, work product, or other appropriate evidence.
Participants examine how reflection works alongside those sources and how reviewers distinguish the learner’s interpretation from independently observed information.
Where direct work products cannot be shared, the review should identify appropriate alternatives, such as an approved description of the process or a structured observation. The suitability of the alternative depends on the learning claim being reviewed.
Make the learner’s contribution visible within the shared work.
An authentic experience may involve a team result, a supervised activity, or a project that continues beyond the learner’s participation.
Record what the learner actually did, which decisions they made, what support they received, and what others contributed.
That context helps reviewers interpret the evidence and helps learners explain their learning accurately afterward.
THE MATCHING WORKSHOP MODULE
Module 9: Experiential & Curricular Alignment
This practical minicourse helps faculty, program leaders, experiential-learning teams, placement coordinators, and relevant partners examine how authentic experiences contribute to curricular learning.
Participants learn a repeatable review method and apply it to one selected experience, activity, or bounded part of a placement. They connect its purpose to learner responsibilities, preparation, feedback, evidence, and academic review.
The exercise also identifies the experience, activity, outcome, supervision, and evidence relationships that a subsequent Gobekli configuration would need to maintain.
This module helps your team:
- Define the curricular purpose of an experience
- Clarify whether it provides exposure, practice, or demonstration
- Identify activities that support the intended outcomes
- Examine opportunities across different settings
- Make individual responsibilities and contributions explicit
- Review preparation, supervision, and feedback
- Connect reflection to specific activities and evidence
- Clarify what supervisors and academic reviewers contribute
- Identify appropriate evidence and sharing conditions
- Connect reviewed learning to subsequent development
- Develop a focused experience improvement brief
- Outline a connected experiential-learning configuration
What should change when the experience and its purpose do not line up?
Participants identify the specific connection that needs attention before proposing a response. The issue may involve the available activities, learner preparation, support, evidence, or the curricular interpretation of the experience.
Confirm the Contribution
Document where the activities, support, and reviewed evidence support the experience’s intended curricular role.
Improve the Opportunity
Adjust responsibilities, activities, or complementary work so learners can engage in the relevant learning.
Strengthen Preparation
Clarify readiness expectations and provide the orientation or preparatory learning needed to participate meaningfully.
Improve Support
Make supervision, feedback, resources, and opportunities for further practice more useful and timely.
Strengthen Evidence and Review
Clarify what should be documented, how reflection contributes, and how reviewers will interpret the available evidence.
Reconsider the Curricular Role
Review what the experience can reasonably contribute when its opportunities or conditions do not support the original expectation.
Several responses may apply to the same experience. Proposed changes should identify the people responsible and any partner coordination or institutional approval needed.
What should an experiential and curricular alignment review examine?
The educational purpose
Which outcomes should the experience support, and what kind of development is expected at this stage?
The actual opportunity
What activities and responsibilities can the learner meaningfully undertake in this setting?
The conditions for learning
What preparation, supervision, resources, feedback, and opportunities to improve are available?
The learner’s contribution
What did the learner personally do, decide, explain, or produce, and with what assistance?
The evidence and judgment
What information supports the learning claim, how is it reviewed, and what remains uncertain?
The curricular connection
How does the reviewed learning inform subsequent experiences, learner development, or improvements to the opportunity itself?
Learn the method. Review one authentic learning experience.
Bring one internship, project, clinical activity, research experience, service-learning opportunity, or other authentic experience. For a broad placement, select a consequential activity or learning expectation that participants can examine meaningfully.
STEP 1
Define the curricular contribution
Identify the relevant outcomes and clarify whether the experience should provide exposure, practice, integration, or demonstration.
STEP 2
Describe the learner’s work
Document the activities, responsibilities, decisions, and individual contribution expected within the setting.
STEP 3
Check opportunity and support
Examine whether the relevant work is available and whether preparation, supervision, resources, and feedback support participation.
STEP 4
Connect evidence and reflection
Identify appropriate work products, observations, explanations, and reflective prompts. Record any conditions affecting what can be collected or shared.
STEP 5
Clarify the review
Define what reviewers need to examine, who contributes observations, who makes the academic judgment, and what the evidence can support.
STEP 6
Plan the improvement and configuration
Select a response and record ownership, partner coordination, follow-up learning, and the relationships a future implementation would need to maintain.
Participants leave with a documented experience review, a proposed improvement, and a starting configuration brief. Where the information is incomplete, the record identifies what must be confirmed with learners, supervisors, partners, or academic reviewers.
- Begin with a specific experience and curricular purpose
- Examine actual activities and learning opportunities
- Make the learner’s contribution and support explicit
- Connect reflection with appropriate evidence
- Clarify observation, feedback, and academic judgment
- Assign responsibility for improvement and follow-up
FUTURE PRODUCT CONNECTION
Keep authentic experiences connected to the curriculum and the learner.
The workshop identifies the information and relationships needed to explain how an experience contributes to learning.
A potential TalentSync EDU configuration could organize experience and activity profiles alongside curricular outcomes, preparation expectations, partner roles, evidence requirements, and review responsibilities.
The proposed configuration could connect:
- Experience profiles: the internship, project, placement, research activity, or service-learning opportunity and its intended purpose
- Curricular relationships: the courses, program outcomes, and developmental expectations the experience supports
- Activity profiles: the tasks, decisions, responsibilities, and application opportunities involved
- Opportunity conditions: which activities are available, which are required, and how missing opportunities are addressed
- Preparation requirements: the knowledge, orientation, resources, and readiness needed to participate
- Supervision and feedback roles: who supports the learner, observes relevant work, and provides feedback
- Individual contributions: what the learner did within team or supervised activity and the level of assistance involved
- Evidence expectations: appropriate work products, observations, explanations, and reflection connected to the learning
- Review relationships: criteria, contributing reviewers, academic decision responsibilities, and unresolved questions
- Integration and follow-up: connections to later learning, further practice, advising, or experience improvement
- Learner connections: relevant experiences, capabilities, evidence, and stories the learner chooses to organize or share through TalentPass
For example, the workshop might identify that an internship is intended to develop analytical judgment but does not consistently provide a relevant activity. An implementation brief could specify the intended outcome, required opportunity, complementary project, supervisor feedback, evidence expectations, academic reviewer, and next review point.
With the learner’s participation, TalentPass could help organize an account of the experience alongside relevant activities, capabilities, feedback, and appropriately shared evidence. The learner’s profile could retain context about their contribution and the conditions under which the learning occurred.
The next step is a scoped implementation conversation: select the initial experience, confirm available capabilities, identify integration or development needs, and agree on responsibilities and success criteria.
PRODUCT AND DECISION BOUNDARIES
Keep participation, performance, and reviewed learning distinct.
A connected configuration should help people understand the educational contribution of an experience and the basis for interpreting it.
Its design should preserve the distinction between:
- Completing hours and demonstrating a capability
- Having an opportunity and actually undertaking the relevant activity
- Observing work and performing it
- Supported participation and independent performance
- A team result and an individual contribution
- A learner’s reflection and a supervisor’s observation
- Positive feedback and evidence addressing a defined criterion
- Sharing an experience and granting access to all underlying records
Academic reviewers retain responsibility for curricular and assessment judgments. Supervisors and partners contribute observations and context within their agreed roles.
The product connection described here includes capabilities envisioned for TalentSync EDU and potential TalentPass connections. Availability, configuration needs, integrations, and required development would be confirmed during scoping.
The workshop produces a useful experience review and improvement brief independently of product adoption.
What to bring into the conversation
Start with one experience whose curricular contribution is important, unclear, inconsistent, or difficult to document.
A useful starting question is: “What should learners develop through this experience, what will they actually do, and what information will support the review?”
Useful inputs may include:
- The selected experience or placement description
- Relevant course and program outcomes
- The stated educational purpose
- Expected learner activities and responsibilities
- Project briefs or learning agreements
- Preparation and orientation materials
- Supervision arrangements
- Feedback schedules or guidance
- Assessment criteria or rubrics
- Reflection prompts
- Examples of appropriate learner work
- Observation or supervisor-feedback forms
- Expectations for individual contribution
- Differences across sites or projects
- Known limits on available activities
- Relevant evidence-sharing conditions
- Learner and partner observations
- Connections to subsequent learning
- Academic and partner responsibilities
- The decision the review should support
The required Learning Alignment Direction module establishes the scope and decision this work should support. Related modules can help clarify uncertain outcomes, assessment expectations, or preparation dependencies.
The depth of the exercise depends on the available information, participant knowledge of the experience, partner involvement, and time allocated within the selected workshop.
What this module can help your team produce
An experience-to-curriculum map
A documented connection among the experience’s purpose, relevant outcomes, learner activities, responsibilities, preparation, and support.
An evidence and review brief
A clear account of what should be observed or documented, how reflection contributes, which criteria apply, and who reviews the learning.
A practical improvement plan
A proposed change to the opportunity, preparation, support, evidence, or curricular role, with responsible people and a review point.
A starting configuration brief
An outline of the experience profiles, activity relationships, curricular connections, partner roles, evidence expectations, and review responsibilities a subsequent Gobekli implementation would need.
These outputs begin with the experience reviewed during the module. Final scope depends on the modules selected, available inputs, and the alignment decision established through Learning Alignment Direction.
Where might the work lead next?
An experience review may reveal an unclear learning purpose, an assessment that does not capture the relevant contribution, or preparation that needs to occur before participation.
Outcome & Capability Clarity
Define the knowledge, actions, context, and level the experience is intended to help learners develop.
Learning Activities & Assessment Alignment
Examine whether the activities and assessment provide a clear connection between intended learning and what learners demonstrate.
Prerequisites & Course Sequencing
Review the preparation learners need before an experience and how its learning supports the next stage of the curriculum.
Questions institutions ask before beginning.
It examines how an authentic experience contributes to the intended learning of a course or program. The review connects curricular purpose to learner activities, preparation, support, evidence, and academic judgment.
The method can be applied to internships, projects, clinical activities, research, service learning, fieldwork, simulations, and other authentic experiences. The exercise focuses on a selected example with a clear educational question.
Hours document participation. Understanding a particular learning outcome requires information about what the learner did and what the relevant evidence supports. Time may be a requirement without establishing every intended capability.
No. Different settings and activities may support shared outcomes. The review examines whether each route provides a meaningful opportunity to address those expectations and whether important differences remain visible.
Identify how the missing opportunity affects the curricular purpose. Participants can consider a complementary activity, a change in responsibilities, a different arrangement, or a revised interpretation of what the experience contributes.
That module examines the relationship between an activity, its intended capability, and assessment. This module adds the conditions surrounding authentic experiences, including site variation, partner roles, supervision, access to opportunities, and integration with the curriculum.
Connect reflection to specific activities, decisions, feedback, concepts, or outcomes. It can reveal the learner’s interpretation and reasoning. Claims about performance may also need observations or other appropriate evidence.
It can contribute useful information when it describes relevant behavior, context, and the basis for the observation. Academic reviewers need to understand what was observed and how it relates to the learning expectation.
Clarify the criteria using concrete descriptions or examples and identify which judgments supervisors are being asked to contribute. The review can also reveal a need for reviewer discussion or better guidance.
Record the learner’s responsibilities, actions, decisions, and contribution alongside the shared result. Individual explanations, relevant work, and observations can help reviewers interpret what the team outcome establishes about each learner.
Identify an appropriate way to review the relevant learning within the conditions of the experience. An approved process description, structured observation, or other alternative may be useful, depending on the claim and the information required.
Use the applicable program expectations and site arrangements to define the activity, supervision, evidence, and review roles. A selected clinical learning question can be examined within that context, with relevant academic and site representatives involved.
Identify the concepts and methods learners apply, the outcomes the experience supports, and the learning that should follow. Reflection, academic review, and subsequent activities can help make those connections explicit.
Include people who define the curricular purpose, coordinate the experience, understand the available activities, support learners, and review their learning. Depending on the example, this may include faculty, placement teams, supervisors, partner representatives, and learners.
The reviewed example identifies the experience and activity profiles, curricular outcomes, preparation needs, partner roles, evidence expectations, and review responsibilities that need to remain connected. These become the starting point for scoping a potential TalentSync EDU configuration and appropriate TalentPass connections.
No. The review method and improvement brief are useful independently. A subsequent implementation can be considered if your organization wants help maintaining experiential-learning relationships or organizing appropriate learner context. Product availability and implementation requirements are confirmed during scoping.
CONNECT AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE TO REVIEWED LEARNING
Make the experience count toward a clearer learning purpose.
Connect what learners do to what the curriculum intends—and identify the evidence, support, and review needed to make that contribution clear. Leave with a focused improvement and a starting configuration brief.
This module is part of Gobekli’s configurable Learning Alignment Workshop. Begin with Learning Alignment Direction, then select the modules that address your organization’s particular challenges.