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Embedding Academic Skills and Experiential Learning Supports in our Courses

Originally published March 6, 2026

 

At Laurier, course instructors are fortunate to have access to a range of supplemental services to support course design and classroom teaching, from writing and academic skills development, to community service and career-integrated learning. Our colleagues in support units such as Experiential Learning and Career Development (including Career-integrated Learning, Community Service Learning and other Experiential Learning in curriculum), and Student Success Services (including Writing Services, Transition and Learning Services, and Course Learning Support) are experts in their fields, and can offer workshops, modular content or learning exercises and activities that can be integrated into the course framework. Moreover, our librarians can collaborate with faculty to help build students’ information literacy and research skills through the Laurier Library’s Course and Teaching Support. The supports offered by these professionals can serve to enhance the value proposition of the course for students, providing specialized skills training that complements the subject matter expertise of course instructors (Billet 2011; Cooke et al., 2024; McWilliams and Allen 2014; Salazar 2021).

Best practices in integrating academic skills and experiential learning (ASEL) supports into your course include being intentional in how you approach such supports, working in partnership with support unit colleagues, and assessing student learning along the way.

 

Be Intentional

The first question to ask when considering integrating ASEL components is: why are the supports necessary for your course? How will the supports help students achieve the learning outcomes you have set for the course?

Course-level student learning outcomes “describe the skills, knowledge, and abilities that students will have acquired upon the successful completion of a course” (Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance) – what is it that you want your students to leave the course knowing, thinking, and able to do? Identifying and articulating the learning outcomes is the first step in a well-designed course, and the choice of content, assessment methods and in-class teaching practices – as well as supplemental academic supports – should all be designed ‘backward’ from these outcomes (Wiggins & McTighe 2005). 

Of the four to six main learning outcomes, the instructor can identify what skills-based learning outcomes – alongside those that are content-based – are defined for the course and consider possible supports. 

Sample Policy Brief assignment with aligned academic skills and career-integrated supports: 

  • Supplemental instruction by a reference librarian on how to use government document databases.

  • Support in being able to understand and practice how to write in the style of a formal policy brief by a writing consultant.

  • Reflecting on the ways in which course components are building and enhancing skills that will be useful after graduation in the public sector using Laurier’s competency framework.

In this context, instructors will want to think carefully about how any supplemental supports are linked to the course content (conceptual, methodological, subject-specific); the assessments to be used (what is the fit with written assignments and grading approaches?), and in-class teaching (i.e., how will visits by a writing, library, academic skills or experiential learning professional be framed by previous class sessions and how will they inform what comes after?). Importantly, instructors need to know how they will assess learning from the supplementary supports.

The time spent engaged in ‘backward course design’, thinking through the role and fit of supplemental academic and skills-based supports, makes it more likely that students will achieve the learning outcomes and have a meaningful course experience.

 

Work in Partnership

To make the most of supplemental services, course instructors will want to work in partnership with ASEL colleagues. Though it takes time and forethought to bring ASEL experts into your classroom, the effort pays dividends in student learning and supports achievement of your teaching aims!

Best practices include the following:

  • Plan well ahead: Just as instructors need time to plan course components and prepare content, ASEL colleagues need to assess how your request might be balanced with those of other instructors across their own workload, as well as take the necessary actions to put supports in place (e.g., find community placements, create a writing workshop that suits your assessment or tailor career-integrated learning exercises to your course components). Remember that you are only one of many instructors that are requesting support, e.g., did you know that there are over 4500 students enrolled in courses that have a community and workplace partnerships component at Laurier? Or that over 3,400 students were enrolled in courses that included an in-class workshop from Writing Services or Transition & Learning Services in the Fall 2025 term?

  • Communicate regularly: Stay in contact and work closely with your ASEL colleague – contact them early with your ideas, take their advice into account, keep them apprised of the relevant course design components as they develop and confirm arrangements for class visits or exercises, and be mindful of their resources.

  • Be present: Course instructors need to be present and engaged during all in-course presentations or exercises organized by ASU colleagues, not only to see first-hand the evolving fit with course learning outcomes but also to signal to students the importance of the support session(s) in the course.

  • Be flexible: Having supplemental academic and skills supports integrated into your course means relinquishing some control – however minor – over how the course will progress. There may be minor alterations to schedules and assignments or to groups and organizational partners, etc. And communicate this to students – they need to be flexible too.

 

Assess Demonstration of Knowledge or Skills Learned

Given the role that the academic or skills-based training plays in your course learning outcomes, it is important to assess whether this learning has occurred and – thinking forward to the next iteration of the course – whether alterations/additions might be needed.
When developing assessment guidelines, refer to ways you expect students to incorporate the skills or knowledge from the ASEL support sessions or experiences to be successful on that assignment. Make it concrete in your evaluation by including those skills or knowledge as criteria in your grading rubric. Consider graded reflection components that are aligned with learning outcomes and that encourage students to identify and make sense of the learning that has occurred through the ASEL supported activities (see Rolfe et al., 2021, for guidance on how to do this). Integrating these aspects into assessment guidelines and grading rubrics signals to students the importance of their attendance, engagement, and application of the skills and knowledge of these sessions in their course and disciplinary contexts. Assessments then give you information about the successful integration of what students learned from the supplemental instruction and support the learning partnerships going forward.

 

Contacts for Connections

If you are interested in integrating academic skills and experiential learning into your course, you can reach out to our partners directly.

 

Sources Cited


 

 

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