Post Experiential Activities: In-depth Debrief or Reflections

In experiential learning, reflections are one of the most essential parts of learning. Participants do not only participate in activities but also to ensure that each activity conducted is accompanied by reflections or in-depth debrief.

Reflections are often called a debrief. It is usually conducted briefly post-activity to inform the learning outcomes set when the activity is planned to be implemented by a trainer.

A debrief is conducted after an experiential learning activity where the trainers would usually conclude the activity with a lesson for the participants with less opportunity to recall, describe, express, evaluate, and analyse their experience themselves. Trainers would normally conclude their learning for them.

Although learning outcomes are recommended in all the activities outlined, trainers should first facilitate the participants to reflect on the outcomes before informing them about the recommended outcomes listed. Trainers should ensure that the participants are free to voice their learning outcomes than to be too rigid in following the suggested or set outcomes.

According to Dewey, there are two types of reflections.

Trial-and-error reflection

Participants who are doing an experiential learning activity reflect on how to go about doing an activity, like trying to solve a puzzle by putting and removing each piece of the puzzle, making sure that they are at the right spot.

In doing this type of reflections, participants would think critically and creatively on how to solve a problem. As they put their heads together, they should eventually manage to untangle the knot.

Intentional reflection

This type of reflection is a guided and facilitated reflection after an activity is experienced. Participants are usually placed in small groups with a facilitator in each group to reflect on their experience.

?After that, the trainer will do another reflection session by calling all the groups together to answer more questions about their experience. This is intense but the results are warranted and proven to be effective by Yeap (2021).

Trainers are encouraged to use questioning methods according to the reflective cycle developed by?Gibbs?(1988).

There are six stages in this cycle namely, description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, action plan. Each of these stage helps trainers to generate questions accordingly.