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ETC 2025 Learning Labs
Monday, March 17^th, 2025 – Mobile, Alabama

Join one of ETC 2025’s wonderful three Learning Labs on Monday, March 17th, 8:30am – 4:00 pm and ensure that your educational travel offerings will be informative, on the cutting edge and great fun.  Expand your current definition of experiential, transformational and educational travel. Learn what it takes to craft engagement activities and experiential programming that lead to rich discussions and insights by asking the right questions – and encounter collaborative learning at its best!

• Experiencing Africatown & Clotilda: The Last Slave Ship
• Revealing Mardi Gras: Behind Cultures & Traditions
• Exploring North America’s Amazon: Places To Experience & Protect

Using the Educational Travel Conference’s destination venues as the experience platform each year, ETC’s Learning Labs consist of well-designed and carefully organized in field experiences that include opportunities for reflective harvesting of learning through personal reflection and story-work on tour. Itineraries are structured so Conference attendees are fully immersed with time for rich discussions, sharing insights and reflection on the experience, the learning they extract, and where they can apply ideas in their own programs.

These Learning Labs respond to the changing landscapes for Lifelong Learning, the means and delivery for Educational Travel and introduce an innovative approach to the design, curation and delivery of immersive, interactive, compelling and transformational travel experiences for travelers whatever their destination.

Experiencing Africatown & Clotilda: The Last Slave Ship

Follow the heartbreaking journey of 110 Africans from the Door of No Return in the country of Benin, Africa to the swampy shores of the Mobile River Delta. A despicable bet over an illegal venture by some of the city’s elite altered the course of their lives and their descendants’ lives forever. The proof of the crime, their ship of passage called the Clotilda, was burned and sunk in a shallow river. Learn about the Africans’ capture in their native land, their 5 year enslavement, their settlement known as Africatown, and the discovery that brought this 150 year old secret to light.

Revealing Mardi Gras: Behind Cultures & Traditions

Mobile boasts the earliest documented American celebration of Mardi Gras in 1703 and it’s the reason natives perpetually say, “We started it!” In this learning lab, you will be immersed into Mobile’s rich Carnival culture and history. From it’s humble beginnings as an impromptu celebration of French soldiers in the settlement of Mobile, to the almost month long celebration it’s become today, Mobile’s Carnival is a lavish and proud tradition.

Exploring North America’s Amazon: Places to Experience & Protect

Spend the day learning and exploring the most bio-diverse river system in the United States. The Mobile-Tensaw Delta is home to 1,071 identified species and many of those are only found in this 20,323 acre region. You’ll experience exotic plants and animals up close and learn firsthand why conserving the delta is a top priority for Alabamians.

Why sign up for a Learning Lab?

Community Discussions

We ask colleagues to collaboratively gather and share useful resources for the benefit of educational travel professionals.  If you have an update or resource to share, please email us.

We are pleased to provide additional resources, not listed here, to our members. Members can also join one of the discussion forums at the bottom of this page.

If you have a question to pose to colleagues you can do so in one of two ETC discussion forums:  The Member Forum or the Travel Planner Forum.  Click <Discussion Forum> above to access them

The discussion forums are the place for members to ask specific questions and problem solve on issues of mutual interest or concern. You must be a current ETC member to access them.

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