The Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC)

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The experiential learning cycle, created by David Kolb, has 4 stages:

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1. Experiencing: Learning begins with an experience. In our case this is the learning activity you’re facilitating.

<span style="font-size: 18pt;">1. Experiencing: Learning begins with an experience. In our case this is the learning activity you’re facilitating.</span>

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2. Reflecting: At this stage you encourage your participants to reflect on what they learned from the experience. You’ll prompt them to consider key points, highlights etc. It’s about the individual learner at this point.

<span style="font-size: 18pt;">2. Reflecting: At this stage you encourage your participants to reflect on what they learned from the experience. You’ll prompt them to consider key points, highlights etc. It’s about the individual learner at this point.</span>

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3. Generalizing: Now you help your learners jump into generalizing based on their reflections. This is where the groups works more as a group to draw conclusions, parallels, etc. This is also the point where you can add in some additional learning (reference a case study, another example, etc). Ideally you want the group to jump in here too, Eg expand it from individual learning (#2) to group learning where individuals learn from each other.

<span style="font-size: 18pt;">3. Generalizing: Now you help your learners jump into generalizing based on their reflections. This is where the groups works more as a group to draw conclusions, parallels, etc. This is also the point where you can add in some additional learning (reference a case study, another example, etc). Ideally you want the group to jump in here too, Eg expand it from individual learning (#2) to group learning where individuals learn from each other.</span>

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4. Applying: This is where you encourage the learning to leave the room - in other words to apply it to other situations. This next experience starts the whole cycle over again.

<span style="font-size: 18pt;">4. Applying: This is where you encourage the learning to leave the room - in other words to apply it to other situations. This next experience starts the whole cycle over again.</span>