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Alternative Modes of Teaching and Learning

Alternative modes to delivery

Experiential Learning

Definition

Experiential learning can be described as learning that arises out of reflection on experience, leading to purposive action in order to test out the 'hypotheses' that arise out of this reflection. This action in turn leads to further experience and reflection, so that experiential learning can be seen as a continuous cycle or spiral. Within the educational context. This learning can be promoted either through reflection on past experience or through reflection on either planned for experience, such as work placements, or on simulated experience enacted within the educational context, eg. Role plays. Key questions for pedagogy include firstly what experience to focus on, and what methods can be adopted to promote reflection. Such methods could include learning journals, portfolios, video diaries, action learning, mentoring, and coaching.

The starting point in this approach is a real or concrete experience of which the student is part, actively explores, and makes note of what is happening. The experience is then milled over in the phase of critical reflection followed by a period of drawing generalisations and preparing to experiment for the next experience. Typical inclusions in experiential learning are learning contracts, journals or portfolios, projects and workshops.

Jaques, D., G. Gibbs, and C. Rust, Designing and Evaluating Courses. 1993, New South Wales: Educational Methods Unit, Oxford Brooke University.

This perspective on learning is called "experiential" for two reasons. The first is to tie it clearly to its intellectual origins in the work of Dewey, Lewin and Piaget. The second reason is to emphasize the central role that experience plays in the learning process. This differentiates experiential learning theory from rationalist and other cognitive theories of learning that tend to give primary emphasis to acquisition, manipulation, and recall of abstract symbols, and from behavioral learning theories that deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process. It should be emphasized, however, that the aim of this work is not to pose experiential learning theory as a third alternative to behavioral and cognitive learning theories, but rather to suggest through experiential learning theory a holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behavior.
(Kolb, 1984, p. 21)

Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. This definition emphasizes several critical aspects of the learning process as viewed from the experiential perspective. First is the emphasis on the process of adaptation and learning as opposed to content or outcomes. Second is that knowledge is a transformation process, being continuously created and recreated, not an independent entity to be acquired or transmitted. Third, learning transforms experience in both its objective and subjective forms. Finally, to understand learning, we must understand the nature of knowledge, and vice versa.
(Kolb, 1984, p. 38)

Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Learning by doing -- includes knowledge and skills acquired outside of book\lecture learning situations through work, play, and other life experiences.

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Resources and References