Traditionally, higher education has been predominantly concerned with the transmission, acquisition and reproduction of disciplinary knowledge. Systematic instruction and conceptual knowledge are still important in university education, but focusing only on transmission may limit opportunities for learners to connect knowledge with experience, inquiry, reflection and application. Experiential learning is an alternative orientation where learning occurs through the interaction of experience, reflection, conceptual understanding and action. But more and more use of projects, field work, simulations, problem solving activities and other experiential practices do not necessarily result in meaningful learning. Thus, this conceptual paper focuses on how experiential learning can shift activity-based pedagogy toward meaningful learning in higher education. The paper draws upon foundational perspectives associated with Dewey, Kolb and constructivist approaches and contemporary scholarship on experiential learning and higher education pedagogy to critically examine the relationship between experience, reflection, knowledge construction and application. It suggests that for experience to be educationally meaningful, it needs to be authentic, actively engaged with, critically reflected upon, connected to prior and theoretical knowledge, applied to relevant contexts and supported through feedback. Based on this, the paper suggests an integrated framework of meaningful experiential learning that involves eight interconnected dimensions, namely authentic experience, active engagement, reflection, connection, meaning-making, application, feedback and transformation. The paper concludes that for experiential learning to be effective there needs to be a deliberate alignment of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and learning environments. Experiential learning, then, is not simply learning-by-doing, but a systematic process in which experience is converted to understanding and understanding is converted to informed action.