In this article, we focus on how to design experiential learning and what we can learn from Kolb’s Cycle.
HOW DO WE LEARN?
One of the most influential frameworks for understanding the learning process is David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, which explains learning as a continuous, dynamic process grounded in experience. Whether you’re designing a workshop, coaching someone, or reflecting on your own learning journey, Kolb’s model is a powerful tool for making learning stick.
According to Kolb, learning is not a one-dimensional transfer of knowledge. Instead, it’s a holistic integration of experience, cognition, emotion, and action. We learn best when we:
- Engage fully in meaningful experiences.
- Pause to reflect on those experiences.
- Extract lessons from them.
- Apply those lessons in real life.
This model encourages us to perceive learning not as a line, but as a cycle with multiple different processes happening at the same time. It emphasizes the connections that learners are creating between their new sensory experience and their previous knowledge and experience.
According to Kolb’s Learning Cycle, learning happens in 4 main stages:
- Concrete Experience (Doing). First, the learners collect sensory experiences through actively engaging in an activity. Example: participating in a role-play exercise or real-life challenge.
- Reflective Observation (Reviewing). The learners take time to process the experience and acknowledge their reactions to it – emotions, thoughts, ideas, realisations, etc. Example: the facilitator asks reflective questions and the learners discuss in small groups: What worked? What didn’t? What emotions or surprises emerged?
- Abstract Conceptualization (Learning). Now that the learners have concrete sensory experience and reflective observations, they link their current experience to their past knowledge, to the bigger context, and/or to a certain concept or idea. Example: The facilitator connects the experience to theory, models, or general principles.
- Active Experimentation | Practice (Trying Again). The learners apply the new knowledge and ideas to their context and explore how the new knowledge is shaping new results.
Here is an example. When working with junior trainers, we ask them to design a session and deliver to a small group (Concrete Experience). After they get the experience, we ask them different reflective questions to encourage them to process their experience (Reflection). Later, we support them to bridge their current experience to their work before and their method (Learning). At the end, we invite them to apply their new knowledge and behaviours by facilitating another activity, based on the first one. (Practice).
We encourage you to use this model and design your own sessions. Enjoy!
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