The difference between living biblically and just imagining it: A study on experiential-based learning among Swedish adolescents

Abstract

As an assignment in their course on worldwide religions, a group of Swedish High School pupils followed 12 biblical rules for two weeks, while another group from the same school just imagined the experience. Groups were asked to reflect and write down either how it was (experience) or how it would have been (imagine) to follow the rules. By applying a semantic test, based on a Latent Semantic Analysis generated representation of the statements, we first found that the semantic representations of the written reflections differed between the experience and imagine groups, and between gender. Analysis of word frequency count suggests that the group that followed the rules were more likely to use words related to their task in their reflections, while the group that imagined the experience generated words related to themself and problems. The results suggest that the consequences of learning by experience might culminate in greater student engagement.