Experiential Learning and Its Impact on Developing People in HR

This essay delves into the impact of experiential learning on human resource development and adult learning. It examines the core principles of experiential learning, particularly David Kolb's four-stage model, which emphasizes learning through concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract concept formation, and active experimentation. The essay analyzes the cyclical nature of this learning process and discusses the contrasting views of scholars regarding its effectiveness. It explores the significant influence of experiential learning on adult education and human resource development, highlighting its ability to bridge the gap between theory and practice, foster self-learning, and enhance real-world professionalism. Furthermore, the essay addresses arguments surrounding the theory, including criticisms of its scope and structure, while also acknowledging its positive impact on management education and employee empowerment. The essay concludes by emphasizing the role of experiential learning in facilitating the application of informal knowledge into meaningful activities and its importance in empowering learners to navigate challenging situations.

Running head: IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
The aim of this essay is to analyze the relation of the experiential learning with human
resource and adult learning. It is a method of learning introduced and discussed in various
dimension. It is a significant area of concurrent research. The style is progressive, radical and
humanist. The concept has presence of an educator to guide the proper utilization of the informal
knowledge in simplistic understanding of complex situation. It has a serious impact on human
resource development and adult education. For better and deep understanding of business
dynamics as well as interpersonal relationships, it has helped greatly. This method give scope for
safe environment for learning, engages the employees to their works, produces verifiable
changes in mindsets by bridging the gap between theory and practice. This model supports self-
learning process, which has given birth of some arguments among the educationists (Knowles,
Holton and Swanson 2014). The essay critically analyses the theory of experiential learning, its
cyclical nature, the contrasting views of the scholars regarding this theory, its impact on adult
learning and human resource development and it is effects in future learning process.
Experiential learning is a comprehensive learning process in which a learner makes
practical and effective use of his experiences to construct knowledge. It is referred more
commonly as “learning by doing”. The learning here takes place as the learners learn through
direct reflection and involvement by comparing their own experiences with the learning. This
method increases their motivation and material detainment. The four- stage model of David Kolb
regarding experiential learning is a basic presentation of this approach. The essay discusses
Kolb's extensive method of the building the model of the concerned learning.
The theory of experiential learning states that the essence of adult learning is to make
sense of life experiences. The adults can learn best when they learn from action and involvement.
Involvement together with experiences offers the best education instead of blindly memorizing

2IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
numbers as well as definitions. David A. Kolb describes the cyclical essence of experiential
learning. It takes place in four stages such as:
Concrete Experience: Adults can learn best if the learning process exceeds the chalk-and-talk
routine. By encouraging simulations or physical actions, the experiential learning evokes
emotional responses that are stronger and realistic therefore reveals cause-effect relationships,
creates powerful experiences, which they do not forget easily.
Reflection and Observation: In experiential learning, the adults gain knowledge and obtain
insight by engaging themselves and reflecting their own practical. Therefore, it not only creates
scope for experience based coaching but also provides opportunity to motivate reflection (Baker
Robinson and Kolb 2012). The learning creates scope for visualizing the actions then analyzing
the procedures.
Abstract concept formation: The actual goal of experiential learning is to assure that the learner
is capable of decoding abstract concepts of their reflections, generalizing the ideas, and
perceiving the pertinence to reality. This type of learning designs estimations to motivate the
learners to practice analytical thinking abilities so that they can contrive concepts as well as
procedures.
Active Experimentation: The hands-on tasks as role-playing, internships, and others let the
learners register the learning therefore they truly learn by actions. Active experimentations in
new situations guide to form concrete experiences.
Impact:

3IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
In recent times, business grows faster therefore needs to incorporate the innovation and
experiential learning in its workplace. experiential learning is an action based education system
and the business world advocates this learning model suggesting that the employees learn 70%
work through informal experience, 20% through connectivity and the rest from the
organization’s training methods. Therefore, most of the organizations employ this purposefully
designed learning style to increase skill and proficiency development. This accelerates human
resource growth and keeps pace with the business (Chan 2012). This process helps to identify the
most required aspects in real world. It creates valuable opportunities to acquire knowledge for
the future. The adult learners get the knowledge of real life professionalism by transforming their
ideas in to action. This learning can be beneficial for both the groups of visual learners as well as
the people learn easily from actions. Experiential learning can replace external learning in terms
of associated expenses. From the organizational point of view, the employees get motivated
easily when they can find the relevance of the learning model with their real life experiences and
get the opportunity to give feedback (Houge Mackenzie, Son and Hollenhorst 2014). The
experiential learning model has been proved more efficient than other learning methods. As in
this style, the employees work actively and at the same time learn from the action, reduce the
time of learning. For example in many institutions, trainee engineers are given opportunity to
master through on job experience and mentorship. In this learning process, the learners face
challenges of queer situations and practice to navigate. On order to maximize learning, the style
has created scope and acknowledged differences to build experiences (Kolb 2014). They work in
a designed development, which accelerate the ability in decision-making and understand the
business requirement (Bevan and Kipka 2012). Experiential theory has a great impact on
business games as it welcomes new ideas and concepts, gives opportunity to apply and ask

4IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
feedback of the actions. As the business has been visualizing drastic changes over time, the
traditional theories need to be revised and Kolb’s experiential learning theory helps the mentors
or executives to adopt new techno-centric methods in accelerating performance and reflection
(Kolb and Kolb 2012).
Experiential learning has gained popularity in adult learning as it celebrates
interconnection between people’s real-life experience and learning process. With the outcome of
increased new skills and ideas, this model helps the educators to keep on motivating and
rewarding for implementation of real life experience into work. Educationist John Dewey has
justified that the individuals transform themselves by creating new knowledge and performing
different roles. Experiential learning has a social and democratic nature that emphasizes in
internal development and process. Instead of dysfunctional experiences that prevent growth, the
individuals must select those experiences helping in building continuity and interaction
(Passarelli and Kolb 2012). Through continuity, Dewey tries to identify the ability to connect the
new experiences with the already known one. Interaction refers to the ability to be interactive
with the work environment and examining the impact of knowledge in that situation. Usually
mentors in adult education help them to link dissimilarities with the known. The principles of
this style of learning help the adults to improve socio-economic life by teaching the requirements
to resolve an issue when the problems arise from uncertainty and shifting situational dimensions
(Sandlin, Wright and Clark 2013). This theory maintains the concept of constant learning process
where the learners continue to pursue knowledge actively and get opportunity to learn from
complex situations. The Experiential learning style often assists the adults to understand
perplexing new situations. For example, an employee when joins a new organization acquires
important socio-political as well as cultural norms of that organization (Warren 2014).

5IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
Argument:
The scholars, who work in the educational ground and various effective learning
processes, have disagreed with the experiential learning theory of David Kolb. Roger argues that
experiential learning style excludes targets, purposes, decision-making and intentions. This
procedure is solely based on the learners rating themselves instead of rating the preferred
learning style. It only strengthens the individual learner instead of relating others. John Heron
thinks the style is narrow and needs more development. The critique finds that the part
concerning concrete experience is not explained properly therefore, leaves a vast scope for more
experiment. It needs to be more elaborated and defined (Merriam and MacKeracher 2013). The
model is more concerned about reflective scrutiny, experimentation and conceptualization. Other
critics find the concept of Kolb is very much ill defined and needs interpretations. The idea that
the theorist has explains seem to be a blend of various theories that has not been amalgamated
logically. .From philosophical point of view, the style is invalid and too restricted. There is no
place for imagination and intuition therefore the persons from different gender, socio-economy,
age finds it difficult to relate (Schenck and Cruickshank 2015). According to Loyness, the
application of this theory has never been convincing and it does not demonstrate the transfer of
process of learning from one setting to the other. The simple linear structure of the model is not
always acceptable by the adult learners who work random. The cyclical model gives the
impression that the levels are equal with time and emphasis. Wilson and Beard support the
theory of experiential learning terming it as extremely influential from the management
perspective. In management education, the theory is free from any problem and has a far-
reaching impact on human resource development and adult learning. From management
perspective, social interactions of an individual are very much important for self-development

6IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
and action. Kolb’s style locates itself in the tradition of cognitive psychology related to language
use, perception and problem solving but merely explains anything therefore alienates people
from cultural, social and historical aspects of reasoning and action.
Therefore, from the above analysis it may be concluded that experiential style of learning
facilitates the employee’s application of informal knowledge into meaningful activity. It is all
about empowering a learner by valuing his personal, practical and informal experiences. It is a
radical tradition that focuses on personal development, increases the ability to accept challenging
situations and solve them by connecting them with personal experiences.

7IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
References:
Baker, M.A., Robinson, J.S. and Kolb, D.A., 2012. Aligning Kolb's Experiential Learning
Theory with a Comprehensive Agricultural Education Model. Journal of Agricultural
Education, 53(4).
Bevan, D. and Kipka, C., 2012. Experiential learning and management education. Journal of
Management Development, 31(3), pp.193-197.
Chan, C.K.Y., 2012. Exploring an experiential learning project through Kolb's Learning Theory
using a qualitative research method. European Journal of Engineering Education, 37(4), pp.405-
415.
Houge Mackenzie, S., Son, J.S. and Hollenhorst, S., 2014. Unifying psychology and experiential
education: Toward an integrated understanding of why it works. Journal of Experiential
Education, 37(1), pp.75-88.
Knowles, M.S., Holton III, E.F. and Swanson, R.A., 2014. The adult learner: The definitive
classic in adult education and human resource development. Routledge.
Kolb, A.Y. and Kolb, D.A., 2012. Experiential learning theory. In Encyclopedia of the Sciences
of Learning (pp. 1215-1219). Springer US.
Kolb, D.A., 2014. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development.
FT press.
Merriam, S. and MacKeracher, D., 2013. The new update on adult learning theory. New
Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Instructor.

8IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE
Passarelli, A.M. and Kolb, D.A., 2012. Using experiential learning theory to promote student
learning and development in programs of education abroad. Student learning abroad: What our
students are learning, what they’re not, and what we can do about it, pp.137-161.
Sandlin, J.A., Wright, R.R. and Clark, C., 2013. Reexamining theories of adult learning and adult
development through the lenses of public pedagogy. Adult Education Quarterly, 63(1), pp.3-23.
Schenck, J. and Cruickshank, J., 2015. Evolving Kolb: Experiential education in the age of
neuroscience. Journal of Experiential Education, 38(1), pp.73-95.
Warren, K., Roberts, N.S., Breunig, M. and Alvarez, M.A.T.G., 2014. Social justice in outdoor
experiential education: A state of knowledge review. Journal of Experiential Education, 37(1),
pp.89-103.