Arguably the most natural and powerful form of learning is through experience, or more precise through reflection on doing and feedback.
By the age of one, we all had a long and painful encounter with Experiential Learning when we tried to walk and then failed, felled and cried like a baby… And even though this was a unpleasant and discouraging exercise going on for weeks, we all made it. Without a teacher, how-to youtube videos or new-age self-help literature.
Because as soon as the first shock was over and we were sitting up again, our brain unconsciously started to make sense of all information available to track down how this embarrassing failure could have occurred. It remembers that by the time we pushed ourselves up, everything was fine. The feet on the floor, the arms in position, the head and shoulders up right. Ready to go!
It was the moment when the Gluteus Maximus muscles in our upper left leg pulled the feet 12.3% towards the front in an angle of 23 degrees and the left arm did not compliment the movement, that the ventricles in the inner ear responsible for static balance got confused for a second. When in the same moment the cat ran by our eyes sent an alarming signal to your hippocampus and we completed lost it… Outch!
Sound confusing? Well, unconsciously this analysis of the relationship of various events within our body or in the external environment happens all the time as we learn to walk, talk, kiss, function in the office or dance the salsa with our grandma at the wedding of our older brother. Once we understood what went wrong, we know what we need to change when we try next time.
Experiential Learning can also done in a more conscious manner to learn a specific skill or just become better at what we already love doing.
- First get yourself into a situation to experience
- After the experience is over, reflect on what happened
- Then try to understand the relationship of what happened and form an abstract concept - if I do A, then I receive B
- Last, decide what to do differently next time
For example if you want to learn how to ride a bicycle, its pretty like the that the following will happen:
- If you get onto a bike and start kicking the paddles you are afraid of the speed. You therefore ride so slow that you fall to the side.
- After you remember that you fell at the exact moment when speed was the slowest
- You create an abstract thought linking speed to stability
- Last, you decided to ride faster next time
Lets try again:
- This time you ride fast. In fact, so fast that you crash straight into the next fruit stall.
- You head hurts and you realize that speeding like that was really dangerous.
- You create the next abstract thought: speed needs protection
- This time you decide to wear a helmet next time you give it a try.
Top football clubs use Experiential Learning after each game and smart companies as soon as a new product was launched when right after the team gets together, analyses what happened and decide what to do different next time.
If you are all by yourself and you are learning something where instant feedback doesn’t come painfully, make sure you have someone that can gives you a second opinion on a regular basis. For young entrepreneurs that can be a mentor, for upcoming journalists the readers of their blog and for English students a friend at school or the teacher.