Why Experiential Learning Is the Most Powerful Way to Actually Learn Anything
You can recite the first time you cooked a meal without a recipe much better than any recipe you've read. Or why riding a bike remains with you forever, and the rules you were told about biking are nothing but a distant memory. Nothing can be learned more effectively than by doing or by experience. This is the essence of experiential learning, and it is changing the way educators, organisations and individuals view growth, skill development and real learning. What Experiential Learning Actually Means Experiential learning is not just "learning by doing," but in a real, deeper way. It's a process that is structured and involves a person interacting with an experience, reflecting on what occurred, making conclusions based on the reflection and then utilizing the conclusions in new experiences. This cycle was first formalised by the educational psychologist David Kolb in the 1980s, and it was a philosophy that has been championed by those such as John Dewey, who belie...