In year 1984, David Kolb, an esteemed Professor of Organizational Behaviour has shed light on the contemporary model of experiential learning. Since then, the model has been highly regarded as an essential tool for training and education.

Experiential learning brings you on a nostalgic walk down memory lane to the times when simplicity and childlike curiosity empowered your early learning journey. In simpler terms, experiential learning teaches you how to become a child all over again.

The concept of experiential learning focuses on learning through the experience. There are no guide books or determined procedures to direct you on how to achieve a certain goal. There is no teacher or mentor to show you the “right” method to acquire knowledge. There is absolutely nothing at all that will influence your learning behaviour.

Remember when you had your first spin on your first bicycle? It may have been many moons ago; perhaps even more. But the element that this childhood activity displayed before us was the way of which we learnt to ride the bicycle. We were not given an established set of instructions to adhere to; the most guidance we may have received was the assuring hands of our fathers and mothers held tightly on the bar to keep us from falling off. And that was it. The rest of it was learnt from the experience itself.

Under Kolb’s renowned model, experiential learning uncovers four diverse elements: the concrete experience, observation and reflection, forming abstract concepts as well as testing in new situations.

As the primary element, the concrete experience explains the firsthand contact between the person and their new found knowledge. When such contact is made, the experience then undergoes a stage of observation and reflection by the person themselves.

Once the above stage is completed, the experience would then be assessed against general rules and theories abstracted from the person’s existing knowledge. Here, the person will try to comprehend the components of the experience by measuring them up against what they already know. This would then lead them to apply what they have garnered from the experience to future situations.

Although Kolb’s model has been globally received as the premier theory of experiential learning, it does not necessarily apply to every one of us. However, the concept itself has fast become a household name in the training and education circles, simply because it injects a sense of simplicity in learning at work, at home and at heart.