Lemons to lemonade: Experiential learning by trial and error

Despite careful planning and preparation, experiential learning environments do not always go according to plan. The North West Tax Clinic demonstrates how teaching can be reframed in a failing clinic to facilitate growth-producing experience and learning. This paper argues that PBL can be applied directly to the experiential learning environment to overcome external factors and provide problems for the students to resolve. This enables students to work through Kolb’s learning cycle and become uber-self-directed learners.