How Learning Happens at AEI

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Basics

AEI is based on the assumption that the best way to truly learn about the environment is to experience it directly. This belief permeates every aspect of the AEI program.

Students challenge their intellect and assumptions through direct contact with social, natural, historical and urban environments. Subjects are studied and integrated through real life experiences, not as isolated facts. This enables students to retain information and incorporate subject matter into their daily lives.

The Specifics

AEI takes a different approach to semester planning. Unlike traditional schools, AEI students live the program 24 hours a day. This means that although there is clear course time, immersion in place and learning is continuous. Our faculty provide academic structure and criteria for students to fulfill their course work.

Each semester begins with an orientation to the operational structure of learning and living on the AEI program. Discussions on course work involve setting up academic guidance systems, determining itineraries based on Lesley University course requirements, preparing to utilize university and state libraries and resources, understanding evaluative techniques, and incorporating principles of self-directed education. Community living is planned as the framework within which group dynamics and the value of consensus, and other methods of decision making, are explored.

To better understand how learning happens, explore a slice of the AEI experience...