Friday 23 October 2009

Kolbs Learning Cycle “ The center of learning is experience”

Some of the students that attended Cat Hill campus at Middlesex University recently looked at the Learning Cycle process by David Kolb as shown above. They were given extracts from an anonymous peer's blog, which they separated into the relevant stages of Kolb's system. This then gave them a better understanding of the cycle.
As I was unable to attend due to an extremely busy week in work I have done some of my own research on Kolb and his cycle of learning.

David A. Kolb is Professor of Organizational Behaviour in the Weatheread School of Management. He joined the School in 1976. Born in 1939, Kolb received his Batchelor of Arts from Knox College in 1961, his MA from Harvard in 1964 and his PhD from Harvard in 1967. Besides his work on experiential learning, David A. Kolb is also known for his contribution to thinking around organizational behaviour (1995a; 1995b). He has an interest in the nature of individual and social change, experiential learning, career development and executive and professional education.

The cycle basically suggests that there are four stages in learning which follow from each other: Concrete Experience is followed by Reflection on that experience on a personal basis. This may then be followed by the derivation of general rules describing the experience, or the application of known theories to it (Abstract Conceptualisation), and hence to the construction of ways of modifying the next occurrence of the experience (Active Experimentation), leading in turn to the next Concrete Experience. All this may happen in a flash, or over days, weeks or months, depending on the topic, and there may be a "wheels within wheels" process at the same time.

You can see a video of David Kolb and Alice Kolb where he quotes “The center of learning is experience” If you learn quickly by watching and listening as opposed to reading lots of text this will be helpful to you. It was for me.
http://www.learningfromexperience.com/

1 comment:

  1. It is truly amazing to see something like the Kolb learning style be so efficient simple and effective after so many years of the method's implementation. It is a shame that it is not used more frequently throughout the different school systems and districts around the globe. We have much to take and learn from it.

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