[feat-img-left] Let’s say you want to teach someone to drive a car. You, as the instructional designer of Driver’s Ed, might choose to assign a hefty textbook—perhaps the manual to the car—as well as a pamphlet about traffic laws. You may quiz your student on the contents of the reading material and find that he can answer all the questions correctly. So you give him an A, and hand him a set of keys. But when he gets into the car, he is dumbfounded. After all, he has never put keys in an ignition before.
Perhaps a better model would be to have the student get in the car from the beginning, to have him practice driving in a quiet neighborhood, shifting gears and parallel parking on an empty street. The student becomes able to coordinate his muscle memory with concepts he’s learned from the text: this is how you steer, this is how long it takes to check your blind spot.
Because it offers the learner hands-on experience, the second method is called experiential learning, and many say it’s the best way to deliver new concepts effectively. It’s not just driving where experiential learning can help: many on-the-job skills, such as conflict management, customer service, and medical practice have to be practiced in order to be perfected.
For example, in the scenario above, the student applied his brakes at a stop sign (DO). Upon reflection (and a slight case of whiplash), he realized that he pressed the brakes too hard (OBSERVE). So he thought about what he might be able to do differently next time (THINK), and at the next sign, he applied less pressure and came to a smooth stop (PLAN). The new driver’s ability to make a gentle and effective stop is now a fully engrained experience in his mind—on its way to being an automatic habit.
Experiential Learning Theory: Learning by Doing
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