Experiential Learning: A Necessity in Career Development (and Life)
Experiential Learning: A Necessity in Career Development (and Life)
Written by Andrew Tessmer, M.Ed, LPC, LMHC, QTAP
Experiential learning can be simply defined as the practice of learning by doing or experiencing. Often this comes in the form of direct in-vivo exposure to the situation or event one hopes to practice for a particular skill or aspect of knowledge. For example, take the quintessential story of learning how to ride a bicycle. If you know how to ride a bicycle today, I welcome you to pause for a second and reflect back to the day when you first learned. Do you remember how that process went? Do you remember if the person who taught you to ride simply focused on teaching you the mechanics of how a bicycle works? Did they teach you the physics behind why you can maintain balance as you accelerate? Did they, perhaps, demonstrate to you how they themselves ride a bicycle and had you observe their actions? Or, did they place you on the bicycle and while holding on to you to ensure your safety, have you practice riding? Often when you reflect back on this event you likely recall the latter, someone holding onto you and helping you accelerate while you were holding on to the handlebars for dear life in a mixture of excitement and fear. Now, you may have fallen several times, became frustrated by your lack of balance, or even thought to yourself that you may never be able to ride effectively. However, you likely persisted and practiced, fell and got back up, and continued to hone your cycling skills while you became more capable. Flash forward to today, you may not even think about how you ride a bicycle, rather, it has become something that feels automatic, habitual, and easy. Your present-day experience and likely relative ease at cycling is due to the positive results of previous experiential learning. But what would have happened if you never actually gained direct exposure to riding a bicycle? What if you had only learned the physics behind the process of riding, or the mechanics of how a bicycle works? Do you feel you would have had the same ability to cycle today?
David A. Kolb, a researcher and early advocate of the importance of experiential learning, stated that “there are two goals in the experiential learning process. One is to learn the specifics of a particular subject, and the other is to learn about one’s own learning process.” Taking the bicycle riding example previously discussed, we can reflect on the latter part of Kolb’s quote on metacognition, or the awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them, that goes into that activity. While you may have a challenging time explaining to someone which muscles are being activated while trying to balance and propel yourself forward or why the speed in which you pedal impacts your control. You can feel and experience these in your body and your mind will translate that awareness into muscle memory, a form of subconscious memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. However, you may not have ever given much thought to how that muscle memory may have worked for you. This is why so many experiential learning activities, programs, and experiences also incorporate intentional reflection and discussion following the experience to encourage you to understand not only how the theories you may have learned applied in this situation, but also how you learned in that situation. By more deeply understanding the way you learn in different environments, situations, emotional states, cognitive states, and time constraints, you can not only increase your mindfulness to avoid mistakes and obstacles in your path presently, but you can enhance your future performance. Often when put under stress or in times of heightened emotions, it can be challenging to think back to theory, what you have learned in the past through a lecture or during your onboarding about a particular procedure, but if you had practiced that procedure before in a variety of different scenarios, you are likely better able to respond appropriately and have a more effective outcome. Therefore, a key component of the effectiveness of experiential learning is not only doing an action, but also reflecting and processing said action.
Another benefit of experiential learning is that it is often a style of learning suitable to folx across ages, backgrounds, lived experiences, and learning styles. While not everyone has the ability to listen to a procedure and absorb information quickly, or read a manual or textbook and attain practical knowledge quickly, experiential learning engages learners more deliberately and actively. As opposed to passively listening, watching, or reading, experiential learning focuses on putting you into situations that mirror real-world experiences for you to be able to apply your knowledge and test out how effectively your approach to a situation via the application of said knowledge works. The reason why experiential learning works for a wide diversity of learners across industry and culture is due to the dynamic and complex nature of experiences themselves. When you think of riding that bicycle, there are dynamic interconnected sensory, cognitive, and emotional processes that are taking place each second as you are riding, requiring focus and concentration that touches on elements of all the styles of learning. So whether you are more of a visual learner or an auditory learner, experiential learning techniques will be effective in increasing your knowledge, skills, and abilities in ways that other approaches cannot. Additionally, through experiential learning scenarios, you also have the opportunity to experience failure in a deeper, safer, and more mindful way that can help you avoid similar mistakes in the future while also understanding how your reaction to failure in the said scenario may or may not have been beneficial. Again, as Kolb stated, experiential learning is not only learning about the “specifics of a particular subject” but also gaining greater clarity and understanding “about one’s own learning process.”
An additional benefit of experiential learning is that it has the ability to increase your confidence and motivation to continue to learn and develop strengths in that subject. While it can be helpful for you to picture yourself in a particular role or learning a new skill, without practical experience and exposure, it is hard to gain confidence in your ability to perform in that capacity. I can imagine myself flying an airplane; I’ve been on a plane before, I’ve seen countless pieces of media showing what pilots do in a wide diversity of aircraft, I’ve talked to professional pilots and understand the general duties and responsibilities of a pilot, I’ve even played video games where I had to fly a plane. However, do I have the confidence to fly a plane? Thankfully, for both my own and others’ safety, I do not. This is because I know that without practical experiential learning flying planes or doing complex flight simulations, I do not have confidence in my ability to do something that I have never done before. Alternatively, should I have had those direct experiences flying planes or complex flight simulations, my confidence in my ability would likely be much stronger. If you have proven to yourself that you can do something through your own lived experience, you increase the likelihood that you will believe in your ability to continue to do so, which can lead to enhanced self-efficacy and motivation. This increase in self-efficacy and motivation is incredibly beneficial from a career development lens where you will inevitably face setbacks and failures throughout the course of your career. However, if you have experiences where you have been able to apply your knowledge in practical ways, you are less prone to self-limiting beliefs, insecurities, and anxieties which can negatively impact your decision to apply for a new position or advocate for that promotion you have had your sights on.
It is hard to think of a scenario where experiential learning is not the ideal way to acquire new skills, knowledge, strengths, or insights. Unfortunately, most traditional educational models are structed in a way that does not focus as much on experiential learning as it should. While there have been movements trending towards greater experiential learning across all levels of education, I often meet with clients in my practice who lack direct exposure to the actual situations, tasks, and responsibilities that are tied to their career of interest. If they do have exposure, it is often only through their experiences with internships, part-time jobs, or job shadowing outside of their direct academic curriculum. I find this to be an unfortunate reality with many peoples’ experiences in traditional systems of education, and likely a key reason why so many individuals are seeking shorter-term, more focused practical and experimental educational options in lieu of or in addition to traditional educational pathways.
An easy way to summarize the importance of experiential learning is through this Confucius quote; "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Often it is through our own lived experiences that we truly begin to understand, and through tailored experiential learning opportunities, we have the chance to engage in the pursuit of knowledge in a more deliberate, consequential, and meaningful way compared to traditional styles of learning.
