Soft Skills Facilitation Blog 2

Soft Skills Facilitation Blog 2

By Md Aizat

Experiential Learning

 Experiential learning is something outdoor educators use extensively in the outdoors, but do we know what they meant by experiential learning? Experiential come from the word experience, James Neil (Neil, 2006)defined experience as a nature of events of which someone or something has gone through, something in the past that has happened and experiential learning (Neil, 2005) as learning by your own and learning through structured experiential programs and activities.

Experiential education as mentioned by Neil (Neil, 2004) is based on experiential learning and is on a few basis: students are actively involved in their learning or activity, educators operate on a mindset that educational goals can be met by letting the natural cause of learning, in this case experience to take place and facilitate the learning and can be applied to a wide variety of disciplines or topics.

The point of the students getting involved in the learning process is about getting the student to have first-hand experience on a certain topic, for example, traditional teaching with talking about how hard is it to kayak in the sea in classroom while an experiential educator would bring that same student out to the sea to kayak and let the student experience it first-hand and created a theory or concept regarding the topic, hence making the teacher involvement here minimal and letting the student do the learning on his or her own. This same point was further supported by Berry (Berry & Hodgson, 2011) that the learner is placed at the center of the experience, making the value of new knowledge, skills or understanding more obvious and immediate benefits to the learner.

The Model

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (Kolb, 1984 cited in Berry & Hodgson,2011) talks about a learning cycle that starts off with concrete experience following by reflective observations followed by abstract conceptualization , active experimentation and the cycle restarts. Kolb Cycle (Kolb, 1984 cited in Berry & Hodgson,2011) explains that the cycle can being at any phase and the cycle should be viewed as a spiral with each stage building up for the other, hence recurring. It has been without it’s critiques, some as mentioned by Smith (Smith, 2010) such as the model doesn’t give much attention towards the reflection process, the model doesn’t account much on different cultural experiences. The four stages gave birth to four learning styles (Honey & Mumford,1986 cited in Berry & Hodgson,2011) which is the pragmatist whose the problem solver, activist who enjoys doing, theorist who takes ideas and forms theories and the reflectors who prefer to observe and collect facts before reaching a conclusion.

Application & Conclusion

However, Neil (Neil, 2004) listed down all the benefits of experiential learning ranging from equality, developing relationships quickly, meta learning, encourage risk taking, diversity of strengths and many more. Experiential learning with reference from my work place has a lot to play a part on the students learning as the experiential model is able to provide that spiral of learning and at the same time able to cater to a broad range of learning styles. For me I believe outdoor education is best supplemented by experiential learning as a mean for learners to maximise from outdoor activities. Studies have shown that experiential learning gives a more impactful learning and gets the student to direct his or her own learning with the right guidance from facilitators.

References

Berry, M. & Hodgson, C., 2011. Adventure Education: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Neil, J., 2004. What is Experiential Education?. [Online]
Available at: http://wilderdom.com/experiential/ExperientialWhatIs.html
[Accessed 6 December 2013].

Neil, J., 2005. What is Experiential Learning?. [Online]
Available at: http://wilderdom.com/experiential/ExperientialLearningWhatIs.html
[Accessed 6 December 2013].

Neil, J., 2006. Experiential Learning & Experiential Education: Philosophy, theory, practice & resources. [Online]
Available at: http://wilderdom.com/experiential/
[Accessed 6 December 2013].

Smith, M. K., 2010. David A. Kolb on experiential learning.. [Online]
Available at: http://infed.org/mobi/david-a-kolb-on-experiential-learning/
[Accessed 6 December 2013].

For futher reading

Student Learning in Outdoor Education: A Case Study From the National Outdoor Leadership School: http://www.health.utah.edu/prt/nols/paisleyjee.pdf

   

Soft Skills Facilitation Blog 1

Md Aizat Bin Abu Bakar

BA Adventure Faciliation & Education

The comfort zone model in a nutshell is based on the belief that people will overcome their hesitancy and grow when put in a stressful situation or when called to rise up to the challenge. The stressful and challenging situation is where students or participants are encouraged to “stretch” themselves and look beyond their fears and without going into the panic zone or misadventure.

This article showcase the other responses that might be experienced by an individual when challenged to overcome a certain activity, some can come in the form of the physiology and psychological aspect as increase in the heart rate, the feeling of fear or excitement. But on top of all these, Brown (Brown, 2008) speaks about what is exactly is the comfort zone, do we know if it’s going to grow or will not grow at all and whether there can be one “universal” zonal model for across the masses. One’s comfort zone varies from one individual to another but what is the definition of comfort zone, Alasdair White (White, 2008) mentioned in is his book , From Comfort Zone to Performance Management that the comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk (White, 2008).

With all these said, Brown (Brown, 2008) drives a point out that there is no such comfort zone theory and the whole theory is based on cognitive development (Piaget, 1977) and cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) by Piaget and Festinger respectively.  Piaget (Piaget, 1977) talks about the creating a state of  balance as a driving force to integrate new experiences into old ones and modify or update current beliefs or behaviours with these new experiences. Brown raises a point that such theory will depend on whether the experiences is up to the person’s desires and needs, whether is it too unusual or far from the normality of activities of an individual. Thus, these experience might be identified as irrelevant and impossible to integrate and such.  

Festinger (Festinger, 1957) in other hand talks about cognitive dissonance, where the reality of things like actions is in conflict with one’s belief or in other words creating an imbalance of thoughts, disequilibrium. Creating a state of dissonance between one’s initial understandings of what they are doing versus what is the main objective to be learned or executed.  

Brown (Brown, 2008) brings out a point where he questions on the linkage students have between their success in the outdoors or in outdoor challenges with any other aspects of life. Leberman & Martin(Leberman & Martin,2003 cited in Brown,2008) did mentioned that activities that pushed students or participants may or may not incur any peak learning .

On the above stated model, my take on this article is that Brown (Brown, 2008) has a point to point out that learning doesn’t need to be stress related or in a rather challenged and risky situation. But also, there needs to be a certain ‘stretch’ to happen in order for things to grow or develop. Like in body building in context, there needs to be a level of stress on the muscle in order for it to recover and grow, thus the same for learning and the usage of the comfort zone model. Alasdair (White, 2008) mentioned in his book that anxiety can improve and increase performance until optimum level of arousal has been attained but he too mention that too much anxiety will cause the performance in this learning to deteriorate (White, 2008). There needs to be a way to gauge to what certain is it deemed too much or too little anxiety for a participant where learning is achieved or not.  Both Piaget (Piaget, 1977) and Festinger (Festinger, 1957) have their points on the cognitive dissonance and development, my take on this is that the comfort zone model is actually a manifestation of these two theories. The model, I feel it should be used solely as to create a mental picture for the participant gauge on what they are about to perform then in which cognitive dissonance and development can take place.

In accordance to the workplace, I feel that the comfort zone model can be maximised by using it to front load students on the activities they are about to undertake as to prepare them mentally. Giving them enough information to create a appropriate level of anxiety but still keep it engaging enough for them to learn and take in the experience. Using it as a metaphor rather than a theory.

One reading I will recommend would be Alasdair White (White, 2008) From Comfort Zone to Performance Management where the author focuses on the using the comfort zone model to illustrate performance, how the comfort zone model can be used to improve performance.

 

Works Cited

Brown, M., 2008. The Comfort Zone: Reflection on A Taken For Granted Model. Ki Waho-Into The Outdoors.

Festinger, L., 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. California: Standford University Press.

Piaget, J., 1977. The development of thought: equilibration of cognitive structures. New York: Viking Press.

White, A., 2008. From Comfort Zone to Performance Management. Belgium: White & Maclean.