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What Does Experiential Learning Offer? Four Insightful Experiences Outlined
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Why we should stay hands-on in a hands-off learning world
RSVP Design fielded a strong team at the ATD Conference and Expo in Washington DC last month. As ever it was a great opportunity to meet friends and clients from all parts of the world, to see how the world of adult learning is evolving, and to have a lot of fun flying the flag for experiential learning. My #1 takeaway is a memory of the number of people who came to our booth and said things like "It's good to see people who are still hands-on" or "You're offering real experiences!". Looking around the expo hall it's easy to imagine why we elicited these reactions, it seemed to me like there was a massive overrepresentation of companies selling AI solutions and psychometric approaches. It would be easy to believe that the learning industry has collectively agreed that all future learning will be mediated by some form of device screen. The numbers seem to support this perception. According to Devlin Peck ‘online learning is the fastest-growing market in the education industry, with a 900% global growth rate since the year 2000’ and, ‘America’s online learning industry is projected to be worth $687 billion by 2030.’ As somebody coming to the end of a 50 year career in education and learning I find this very strange in that we, as scientists, are only just coming to any kind of understanding of what human learning is; we still can't fully define the process of human learning. It's only recently with ideas around neuroplasticity, and being able to image-scan brains in action, that we're starting what I think will be a long process of moving towards any adequate definition. Yet in that Devlin Peck article we read "Also referred to as eLearning or distance learning, online learning is remote learning via the internet." - a worthless statement if we can't define learning in the first place. I come from a background in experiential learning, and part of my belief in that approach is that "Every human being is in an ongoing and never-ending process of self-constructing his or her own unique understanding and meaning from all of the information and experiences they are exposed to (including unconsciously)" Cassie Janisch In accepting this as a basis for my work I have also to accept the limitations of the andragogical designs I create - no matter how elaborate the design, or how apparently creative the lesson, at the end of the day each recipient of that input will always self-construct their own meaning from what they are exposed to. And the implications of this? No teacher can ever predict the exact learning (if any) that will emerge as a result of a given learning input. Only the learner knows the meaning they have assigned to that information, and what other information he or she has combined it with in order to reach the understanding they have reached. Every single person combines all of the inputs they receive in their own completely unique and individual way to construct their own understanding. All teaching is only ever a potential catalyst to learning and does not definitely result in learning in and of itself. Pretty salutory statements I acknowledge - but they underline my endorsement of why every educator needs to leave their ego outside of the classroom. So, for me, this explains why well designed experiential learning tools are such an effective learning method – every aspect of the learning environment (both deliberately included and serendipitous) is combined in a way that is unique to the individual learner in a way to create greater understanding of their world. If scaffolded by a disciplined experiential learning process, this produces learners who are far better at transferring learning to their 'real world environment' and effectively applying it there. Every human being is capable of incredibly complex multi-sensory reasoning and original thinking, but this is so often disabled by the environments in which we learn, what we are forced to learn, and how our learning is measured. And I'm afraid that I don't see a lot in the rapid growth of AI that challenges this disablement. If we can accept that all learning is self-constructed and subjective we need approaches that will radically shift the ways that we catalyse learning, rather than approaches which seem intent on reinforcing them. It's interesting to reflect that, in the past, a much broader range of human development was valued. The curriculum was broader; character development was seen as a core purpose of learning and societal relevance was vital. In that sense I would suggest that if we are to equip people to demonstrate competence to operate happily and effectively in an increasingly diverse and interconnected society, we need to reverse this trend. And there's a place for AI and distance learning in this, but to make that happen online educators need to focus on using technology to amplify student interactions through balanced and collaborative approaches, such as Peer-to-Peer learning that allow students to bring their individualised learning context into the learning programme. To do that I would suggest it's better to drop the term 'learning' as being a probable assumption, and call what this is: 'distance teaching'. Until that happens, I'm happy that so many people vote with their feet and come to us stating "It's good to see people who are still hands-on".
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Connection in a disconnected world: why learning experiences matter more than ever
I was in conversation with a long-time friend of RSVP Design, discussing the present state of workplace training. Part of her response really stuck with me and I've thought about it a number of times since: "We've never had a more interconnected world, yet we've never struggled so much for real connection. The quantity is astounding, the quality is disturbing." As a learning-design professional my automatic reaction is to start looking at possible solutions - what can we do to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of interpersonal connection in modern organisations? I'm not sure I have many answers yet, but the ones I can suggest have one thing at their heart - structured learning experiences which motivate those involved to want to find connection with their colleagues. In a world where interpersonal connection is no longer an essential component of working life it's easy to forget that human beings have evolved as gregarious members of communities where connection is what kept us alive. We are genetically coded to seek out other parts of that community in order to work towards mutual success. The whole history of organisation and organisations demonstrates how this attribute has been leveraged for common advantage. Yet in the past few years we have increasingly become reliant on remote working, remote communication and technological systems that remove the need for the perceived inefficiencies of face to face interaction; and that's fine....to a point. Yet the fact is there are still some workplace interpersonal exchanges that go beyond the transactional, and they need people to bring with them the best of their humanity. A few years ago I was witness to a bereaved daughter settling the financial affairs of her dead father. This involved calling the specialist 'bereavement phone line' for a number of financial organisations, insurance companies etc. I was deeply moved and impressed by the care, compassion and delicacy demonstrated by the true professionals on the other end of those calls, yet afterwards I reflected on the impressions that these calls left on me and realised it was largely the contrast between them and the routine transactional calls we're all required to make to get things done. What I was reacting to was the sheer humanity of a fellow human being investing their work with warmth and care, and realising how unusual this experience has become in my exchanges with corporate life. So (back to solution-finding again) how can we motivate people to want to bring their best-selves to the workplace? For me as a professional it's a challenge that has become more difficult in recent times, but I mentioned above one approach that I know has proven effectiveness in achieving this motivation: structured experiential learning activities that are designed and selected to achieve that goal. As ever the experiential learning process starts with a very clear definition of learning objectives - what is it you're looking to achieve in your decision to offer your people these activities. What do you want them to do that they're not doing now? Giving some time to getting an accurate definition of the behavioural change you want to see is essential in both evaluating your success and avoiding encouraging the outcomes you don't want. Once you have clear objectives you can select appropriate activities to enable you to realise the type of learning environment and outcomes you are seeking. If your primary objective is about encouraging people to better connect in the workplace (and your objectives should specify whether this is specifically with colleagues, customers, suppliers etc) then it's worth taking the time to determine as best you can what will motivate participants to want to better connect. It's accessing this motivation within your activities that will allow conversations to develop about how it might be encouraged in the workplace. If part of your concern is that people don't seem to have the opportunities (or are not making the opportunities) for quality workplace interaction then your experiential learning activities should give every opportunity for this to happen - too much 'facilitator time' means not enough 'participant time'. This is not a taught experience so let the participants get engaged in the activity without too much interruption from the front. A quality review / debrief is essential to draw out and define the available learning. This should be structured to address your learning outcomes and should not avoid the emotional interplay that featured during the activity - what were people feeling? Why did they feel this way? How did others affect these feelings? Facilitated well this isn't intrusive or somehow tacky - it's getting at the interpersonal dimension of human relations and that's where motivation to change largely resides. Finally the conversation needs to encompass the translation of this learning back into the workplace - could it work there? What would make this happen? Who needs to do what and when to see it happen? And remember, the people who need to approve the necessary changes may not be in the room, so part of the action may need to be about approaching them to start the ball rolling. As I've said this is just my take on possible solutions, and it's the one we offer often. I'm prepared to engage in that conversation as many times as necessary because I've seen it work in so many organisations, in so many geographies and in so many cultures, and I know that it works.
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