Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning
Hi, Today I’m going to be discussing one of the more controversial learning theories out there, and that’s Kolb’s Theory of experiential learning, first articulated fully in 1984 by David Kolb. And it explores a number of different learning style. Here we have our diverging, assimilating, converging and accommodating styles. Now, these learning styles have, of course, been criticized as perhaps being a little bit too simplistic. But I feel like there are some particular applications of this that we might apply specifically to learning as it comes to the experiential style of learning. There are four stages of this, and this is what we’re going to experiment or discuss today in today’s video. The four steps are Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization and Active Experimentation. So we’ll see how we might be able to apply this to e learning, where it’s relevant and what we might be able to improve our e learning through.
First of all, Concrete Experience. And this is where a learner is actively experiencing an activity. This might be a lab session, fieldwork, or some king of workshops. Now, in e learning, how might we reflect this? We might do it through multimedia. We might have videos or animations that are showcasing real life experiences. We might have virtual labs where people are logging in online and being able to go through specific types of experience and stimulations and so on, and perhaps having interactive videos to as best as we can in a sometimes, I call it low fidelity simulations where we might not be reflecting the experience fully, but they can still get a lot of value from it by going through certain sequences and seeing the way that these scenarios might play out. We might also provide the opportunity for learners to participate in webinars. They can have live discussions; they can collaborate together on projects. And this can all be done in classrooms and online using learning platforms and elearning as well.
The next step we have is Reflective Observation. Now, this is where the learner is consciously reflecting back on that experience what we’ve covered in the previous stage. It’s allowing the learner to gain insights, perhaps understand the challenges, and recognize successes that can come in through these experiences. Now, the way that we might do this in learning platforms and elearning is we might integrate things like forums and journals, blogs and so forth. So these kind of social elements, we’re allowing the learners to document their experiences and gain insights from them. I think social learning is really a powerful tool that we can use through our learning platforms to enable learners to gain insights from each other, document their insights that they’re having and allowing others, and of course, the experts, the tutors here to help facilitate that guide to the discussions as well. So let’s encourage learners to reflect upon what they’re learning and give them valuable feedback and allow them to learn from each other’s.
The next element is Abstract Conceptualization. This is one of the more difficult ones that wrap your head around. I really like to think about it as a way that the learner can apply the knowledge into different aspects. So talking about it, it’s learner. Where the learner makes sense of the reflections, they understand, the patterns they form, their own applications for the concepts and principles that they’ve been learning. So how can we do this? In e learning specifically, we can offer them resources to try and apply what they learn in other contexts. So, readings, we might have tutorials, could give them expert talks that help them to conceptualize and it theorize their reflections upon the topics that we’re discussing. We want to give them some interactive activities where we’re encouraging the learner to identify these patterns, draw the conclusions from their experiences as well. We can do that in interactive modules. We can do that through the social learning that I’ve discussed previously as well.
And finally, and what many will say the most valuable is, the final stage is the Active Experimentation. And this is where the learner applies a concept in new situations. So they’ve been able to conceptualize it, I guess, do all the theoretical components around the learning process, but now we’re actually going to put it into practice. So they’re taking what they learned, they’re testing it, and they’re trying it in different circumstance. In e learning the way we might do this now, this might not reflect the actual workplace fully, but we can still get a lot of value from it. We can give them practical exercises; we can give them case studies to think about how they might apply it. And the higher end, we might even do stimulations where we give them novel situations, and then we go through a guided path where we’re seeing how they respond to those situations, which can be really, really powerful, low risk way of allowing the learners to apply what they’ve learned here. And another great element is using principles of gamification here with the learners so we can have challenges. We can perhaps get them competing with each other as well about how they might be able to perform specific scenarios to really test their understanding, make it a little bit engaging, make it nice and fun as well. And it’s great way that we can actively allow the learners to experiment with the concepts that we are engaged incorporating here.
So that was Kolb’s Theory of experiential learning in, you know, six or seven minutes or so. I hope that was valuable. It is a deep topic. It is a, it one of the more controversial learning styles out there. But I still feel like there are lessons, that we can draw from it and ways that we might consider it in the way that we deliver learning and how we deliver elearning in particular. I hope you found it interesting, at least, and thanks very much for coming though me on this journey.
