It is now an established fact that learning is important for not only growth but also survival of any professional. Learning is a continuous process and should be planned as per changing market needs. With massive advancement in technology latest skills are required. With such dynamic requirement of business, and expectations, our traditional pedagogy seems to be less effective unless we do not add our experiences to it for a better learning process. Adding use cases as experiences will have a longer retention period for the learner as compared to the traditional pedagogy, where knowledge is tough to retain.
Thus we need to add experiences that will stay with the employees or students for a longer period promptly and is compatible with the changing landscape of working within organizations.
Also, today’s learners can get easily distracted and overwhelmed by their responsibilities, leaving no time and energy for learning something new. Working smarter rather than harder will require exceptional training that can be used by employees in the real world. Thus there is a need for experiential learning that will help in the effective implementation of the concepts and facing challenging situations. Experiential learning has benefitted organizations by encouraging learning through “doing” and “experiencing”.
Before we move towards how Experiential learning has changed the outlook for the workplace and the employees, we will highlight the basics of experiential learning and how it is different from the traditional learning approach.
Even the ancient philosophers believed in the approach of experiential learning, they believed- “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”.
Today, the experiential learning approach provides you with more than 80 % retention of what you have learned which is much more than what was provided by the traditional learning approach. Unlike traditional learning, experiential learning is done by learning by going through the experiences of the market experts and implementing their approach in the real world.
Experiential learning is a cyclic process that is followed by learners and they will adjust their actions based on the situations and their outcomes. The cycle has four parts as below-
Once they start experimenting, the new cycle of the experience will begin.
To successfully implement the experiential learning program you must ensure the below components-
When you combine the elements, it will enhance the active participation of the employees in applying their learning in the real world.
Experiential learning is based on Kolb’s idea that works on three major concepts that are mentioned below.
This concept is also known as “andragogy” that considers having prior experiences will create a base for further learning. This means that the participants use their prior experiences to focus on the problem-solving activities. This is beneficial in tackling real-world problems and during training sessions. During training sessions, the learners learn from their earlier decisions and adapt their behavior as per the lessons.
You can be productive by transforming your previous experiences into new ideas or when you transform the old understanding to have a new useful meaning. The learners will be successful when they see a direct connection between their actions and the results during the training sessions. This connection will boost up the confidence of the learners and help them to understand the benefit they will get by learning new skills. It is only possible if the learners will get the specific platform to do experiments without any intervention and see how things work differently.
It is the major concept behind Kolb’s theory of learning via experimenting. It will help the learners to create an immersive experience that will help them to understand the outcomes that can be impacted by their behaviors. Learners will be able to analyze why different actions lead to different outcomes. Learners will get a chance to connect the training sessions to real-life challenges. Learners will be able to experiment with new ideas to get specific outcomes that can be tested.
In the workplace, people adopt various methods for learning new things but everyone ends up following the same path of observation, understanding, grasp, practice, and learning. People engage in new tasks where they shadow experienced people in the market and observe by asking relevant questions, receiving positive feedback. This will influence the learner to carry out individual research by understanding the task and then perform (grasping). Then they repeat the task for better performance and results (practice) until they are under someone’s supervision. If the learner is able to perform the task without any further assistance then he has learned the concept.
Engaging employees in the formal training or face-to-face sessions will not benefit them as the training will not be able to follow the complete path. However, formal learning accounts for only 10 % of learning, 20 % is covered by social interaction, and the remaining 70 % is covered by engaged in hands-on tasks.
Thus, you need to engage yourself in those programs that will provide you with sufficient concept knowledge along with hands-on practice for experimenting with new ideas to increase the retention period of your learning. Also, you will get to face the real-world problems with great ease.
Experiential learning has its pros and cons that need to be considered.
Pros
Cons
We have summed up some benefits that you will encounter on implementing experiential learning with the workplace.
Here, we are considering an example to explain this benefit of experiential learning. In a small study where two groups of students learn about Project Management. One group learned via internships and the other group by direct instruction shows the same success rate. But when given the task of implementing what they have learned, the group with experiential learning was able to apply all the concepts of the learning better than the students who learned via internships.
Similarly, the employees who learn by doing and experimenting are more agile and can easily adapt to new challenging situations.
With experiential learning, the employees will be able to implement their theoretical knowledge in a safe place where they do not have to worry about the failed outcomes. Companies should focus on conducting training sessions that will upgrade their employees so they can implement their learning within the company for getting better results.
With experiential learning, the employees will be able to experiment with new ideas without worrying about their failures. They will get a safe simulation where they can conduct experiments without risking their jobs. This helps them to face new world challenges and come up with new products that will benefit the organization.
Make sure that the organization conducts in-house experiential training sessions so that the employees can utilize most of the time learning and implementing rather than attending sessions somewhere else. If employees are engaged in training sessions that are within the organization then they can learn while they are in the normal flow of the work, this will give them a better chance to implement their learning effectively thus resulting in the increased return of the company’s investment in the training of their employees.
Once employees are set to implement their learning, they will get to know what other skills they require for successfully completing their experiment. Employees can even take the help of the experiential learning tools for getting into the insights about the decisions that were made by various experts during their experiment. This will help employees to change their decisions depending on the changing scenario.
It is important to influence the employees so they take out some time to be engaged in experiential learning for upgrading their problem-solving skills by facing real-world challenges. It is only possible if the organizations implement this learning pedagogy across their learning and development processes. If employees learn within their flow of work they get to implement what they have learned in a timely manner and this knowledge remains with them for a lifetime.
It is evident how experiential learning is beneficial for employees but sometimes it is difficult to integrate via online learning courses. But we have summed up various ways for incorporating experiential learning into the online learning process using online learning tools.
By implementing learning sessions via VR will help the learners to get an opportunity for experiential learning that will impact the employees by engaging multiple senses and emotional connections. VR can provide an amazing experience that is difficult to maintain via videos and articles. Learning by doing has left other learning alternatives behind as experiential learning encourages critical thinking, decision making. It helps in bridging the gap between the theory and practice allowing the employees to experiment and improving retention of knowledge.
Online training sessions are useful to an extent but it does not help you to implement that knowledge in real life. Though you need to find the scenarios that will allow you to implement the knowledge and take advantage of the online learning. Suppose, an employee is about to be promoted to a top management level. Then that employee has to take online refresher courses on management and understand the role closely. Instead of that, the employee should work as an assistant to the manager to closely understand the role and gain a broad range of knowledge on how they can apply that learning in the new position. The employee can do better by learning the experiences of their managers.
Practical stories will help the employees to put their learning into the right context. The stories motivate them to do better by learning from their failures and impact their decision-making skills depending on the changing scenarios. This creates a base for gaining new knowledge as the employees will be able to create a connection between new information and situations.
Most online training sessions help the learners to think differently and act differently in various scenarios by engaging them in challenging activities. These training sessions can be followed by many questionnaires that are beneficial for understanding their learning experience and how they will be able to implement the learning practices and how successful were their outcomes.
This process can also include short meetings whether in-person or online where they will be able to apply their learning or to provide new ideas based on their learnings.
With RedWood learning, you can engage yourself in various programs of your choice and get to learn in real-time with real-world examples and scenarios from which you can gain experiences and impact your decision-making skills.
The concept of Experiential learning is trending and allows people to gain knowledge based on the experience of market experts who will share the real-world examples with possible actions to get the desired outcomes. This pedagogy can be implemented via online training sessions where an instructor will lead a small group for explaining the concept and you can analyze the learning to reach new ideas and implement them in the real world.
It is more beneficial if you are working and get a platform where you can implement the learning without worrying about the failure of your experiment. Sometimes, such experiments lead to big achievements that are recognized globally. So, organizations must engage and influence their employees for experiential learning so they can retain their learning for a longer period and help in increasing the ROI for their business.
Not only this, such learning pedagogy will engage the employees in brainstorming sessions to be more productive and help the business to develop new ideas consistently.
Case studies- (project management)
Suppose, a company makes an employee in charge of creating a new office space. That person needs to take care of every small detail from managing the sitting area to networking and hardware requirements. If there is a one-month time to the official office opening, then only a person with the right skills and experience will be able to manage everything on such a short notice. Only the right person will communicate with the right person who will be going to do all the cable fittings, take care of networking, monitors, and all the required stuff for the office.
In this matter, if that employee has already worked on the office management like that, he must be aware of all requirements and make sure that the earlier mistakes will not create a fuss this time. Thus experiential learning is important where you have hands-on practice in your field. Such techniques are available under the project management course, where you will learn how to manage time, use available resources, and plan according to the given timeline.
At Redwood, we provide project learning courses that will improve your skills and help you to learn techniques for optimum results. Our learners have performed well in their respective fields as compared to others.
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