Experiential Learning Is A Dying Art

(This article is a response to a LinkedIn post on "How to Integrate Experiential Learning and Give Learners Control)

I have been an advocate and practitioner of Experiential Learning since 1978. I was taught how to design and facilitate experiential learning activities (ELAs) by Larry Porter, one of the gurus in the field of organization development. Larry spent over a year teaching me, mentoring me, and coaching me on the "art" and "craft" of ELAs. Larry passed in 2010. OD Network issued an award in his name for communicating knowledge of OD.

Purpose of Experiential Learning

In my mind, experiential learning isn't about giving learners control, it's about creating safe spaces and situations where participants' minds are stimulated and encouraged to explore, expand, and develop original concepts and then test them and learn from the personal insights they gain and those of others who participated in the activity.

I believe that experiential learning is more akin to Dialogic OD and Emergent OD than to traditional Learning and Development. In the former, the facilitators "host" events and introduce "generative images" to help participants escape established paradigms and create new visions and possibilities. Whereas traditional L&D is driven by learning objectives and the need to achieve outcomes predetermined by the trainer or facilitator.

I don't think that one is better than the other. I think they both have purposes. L&D is perfectly suited to learning in the cognitive and psychomotor domains and OD is better suited to the affective domain. The skilled learning professional is able to blend these approaches to design workshops to accommodate all three domains. However, the caveat is time. People need to think, postulate, and hypothesize based on the experiences presented. Experiential learning takes time.

The Remaking of Experiential Learning

Unfortunately, time limitations coerce trainers/facilitators into "telling" participants what they should have learned (the training objectives) during processing, rather than allowing time for the participants to struggle and generate their own learnings (which may not match the objectives).

Successful experiential learning is based on two factors. First, the experiential learning activity has to be carefully selected or designed, so the discussions in groups and during processing will touch on the intended objectives. Second, the facilitator must know how to properly process ELAs. University Associates, a well-known global OD and HRD consultancy in the 1970s and '80s, published a 5-step process for facilitating ELAs. Most people today aren't aware of it and don't know how to do it effectively.

Consequently, in my mind, ELAs as they are implemented and facilitated today, do not help participants learn how to examine, conceptualize, internalize, and make meaning of their experiences. But rather, are introduced to stimulate engagement and variety in training sessions. They are simply "games." (And if truth be told, they are games without the benefit of gamification mechanics. But, that's a rant for a different time.)

Online Experiential Learning

I've been struggling with the most effective ways to facilitate experiential learning online. The issue isn't finding or processing ELAs. The problem is observation. When conducting ELAs in person, participants are actively engaged in their work. Facilitators can move from group to group unobtrusively, easily observing them without distracting them. That's difficult online because participants are made aware of the facilitator's presence as soon as they join a breakout group.

It's important that the facilitator observe participant behavior and be aware of what is said. This information is useful in processing discussions and helping people recall what happened and was said. The facilitator doesn't remark on the observations or comments, simply provides them for reference.

I could go on and on about experiential learning. It's what I do, mostly. I teach participants about designing and facilitating ELAs in the OD and Change Leadership Certificate Program I developed for the Peter Drucker Graduate School of Management. The next cohort begins in July of this year. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you'd like to learn more about the certificate program or ELAs.