By using techniques that are at once fun and engaging, each professor employs unusually effective ways to prepare students for the game of life. Dr. Au, Dr. Grant and Dr. Gilster use active, experiential teaching, and hands-on techniques that make students active participants in the education process. Dr. Grant uses vivid demonstrations in his physics classes, even playing the bagpipes to make a point about sound. He is also developing science workshops for teachers in the Roanoke Valley, workshops that have the potential of revolutionizing the way science is taught. The techniques of these three professors are simply examples of the vast array of experiential teaching practices at Roanoke.
Experiential teaching aims to make each student an active, responsible agent in the whole process.
It is, perhaps, harder on both students and professors than the old style system in which the professor lectured and the students diligently wrote everything down. But the end result of experiential learning is to make students accept agency for their own education and in the process, learn responsibility equipping them to make a difference in the world.