What is Experiential Learning?
Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, discussion and application. Experiences are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results.
Throughout the experiential learning process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative and constructing meaning. Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically.
The results of the learning are personal and form the basis for future experience and learning. Relationships are developed and nurtured: learner to self, learner to others and learner to the world at large. The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking, and uncertainty since the outcomes of experience cannot be totally predicted.
Opportunities are nurtured for learners and educators to explore and examine their own values. The educator’s primary roles include selecting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, ensuring physical and emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.
The educator recognizes and encourages spontaneous opportunities for learning. The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn natural consequences, mistakes and successes.
Having Fun
One of the best by-products of this method is that everyone will end-up having a lot of fun along the way. This keeps them engaged and thoroughly willing to participate. We have found that the retention level, when participants are actively involved, far exceeds the retention level of a classroom style seminar or a multi media presentation. There is a tremendous opportunity to achieve true understanding, at a very core level, using this kind of experience or process.
The supposition is that the best athletes and sports teams are practicing all the time – yet, in corporate America, "We’re just too busy!" "We just don’t have the time" to practice. Instead, workgroups end up imprinting dysfunctional behaviors that create a lack of trust, fear of healthy conflict, lack of commitment to goals, avoidance of accountability and an inattention to results as the leading dysfunctions of most groups. We believe that the truth is that corporate teams cannot afford to continue without stopping to create a cohesive team first.