ADVANCING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
The Unit for Experiential Learning (UEL) advances non-credit-bearing experiential learning at Stellenbosch University by providing coherent frameworks for learning design, recognition, and quality assurance. Grounded in experience, structured reflection, and engagement beyond the classroom. UEL works collaboratively with faculties, divisions, and partners to ensure experiential learning initiatives are relational, reflective, and responsive across diverse contexts.
Learning That Connects Theory With Lived Experience To Address Real-World Challenges
Advancing experiential learning through human-centred innovation, partnerships and research-informed practice, connecting knowledge with application in ways that are relational, reflective, and responsive across contexts.
The Unit for Experiential Learning (UEL) is a specialised unit at Stellenbosch University dedicated to advancing experiential learning as an integral part of the transformative student experience. By intentionally extending learning beyond the classroom, UEL supports learning that connects theory with lived contexts, enabling students to engage with complexity reflectively, and responsively.
The UEL designs pedagogical frameworks, offers professional development for experiential educators, formally recognizes experiential learning on academic transcripts, and cultivates strategic partnerships locally and globally. The UEL also conducts ongoing research, monitoring, and evaluation to ensure continuous improvement, so that experiential learning remains educationally rigorous, institutionally credible, and responsive to evolving student, societal, and educational contexts.
Our Vision, Mission, Values, Philosophy and Core Pillars
Experiential learning is shaped by institutional choices about learning, responsibility, and recognition beyond the classroom.
At the Unit for Experiential Learning, our work is guided by a coherent framework uniting vision, mission, values, and philosophy. Together, these elements ensure experiential learning remains relational, reflective, academically rigorous, ethically grounded, responsive, and future-facing across Stellenbosch University and its wider partnerships.
OUR VISION
Experiential Learning as Relational Praxis
To be a pioneering global thought leader shaping transformative experiential learning in complex and evolving contexts
OUR MISSION
Experiential Learning as Responsive Practice
To enable experiential learning as a catalyst for transformation by implementing practices that respond to contextual complexity, ethical responsibility, and societal change.
OUR VALUES
Experiential Learning as Reflective Presence
Experiential learning, as a shared value, shapes beliefs and behaviours, encouraging reflection and responsiveness to oneself, others, and context.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Experiential Learning as Ubuntu
Experiential learning embodies Ubuntu through shared experience and reflection, rooted in relationality and responsiveness to the communities we serve.
OUR CORE PILLARS
Experiential learning at Stellenbosch University is designed, enabled, and advanced through three core pillars, guided by nine principles. The Unit for Experiential Learning advances its mission through these three core pillars that structure the design, implementation, and evaluation of experiential learning across Stellenbosch University.
HOW TO READ THIS FRAMEWORK
The Unit for Experiential Learning (UEL) structures its work around three core pillars illustrated in the infographic that represent how experiential learning is enabled, supported, and advanced across Stellenbosch University.
Interwoven throughout these pillars are nine strategic values that articulate our practical approach. These values guide decision-making, partnerships, learning design, research, evaluation, and governance, ensuring coherence and integrity across diverse contexts and initiatives.
The three pillars provide structural focus, ranging from student-centered learning design to educator and institutional enablement and strategic advancement and impact. The nine strategic values provide a shared orientation, shaping how experiential learning remains relational, reflective, and responsive while also being academically rigorous, research-informed, and future-focused.
Together, the UEL's Core Pillars and Strategic Values form an integrated framework that connects learning, systems, and sustainable impact.