Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle

What the Kolb experiential learning cycle is

The Kolb experiential learning cycle (دورة كولب للتعلم) is a model that describes learning from experience as a cycle of four successive stages: a concrete experience, then reflection on what happened, then forming an idea or a rule, then trying it in a new situation. The model is attributed to the researcher David Kolb. In the workplace it serves as a framework for designing training and learning on the job, so that learning does not stop when the experience happens. The learner reflects on the experience, draws a conclusion from it, and then tries that conclusion.

The cycle is a management concept concerning the design of learning in an establishment. What follows is an explanation of the concept. It does not claim that the cycle explains all learning, and it does not claim that following the cycle guarantees a result.

The four stages of the cycle

The Arabic translations of the stage names vary from one reference to another, and the English names are the ones given below. Our descriptions of the stages come from secondary summaries of the model and not from the text of the book:

1. Concrete experience. The learner goes through an actual situation. For example, an employee receives a customer complaint, takes part in a meeting or performs a new task.
2. Reflective observation. The learner looks back at the experience and asks what took place, what the learner noticed and what was surprising.
3. Abstract conceptualisation. The learner draws from the reflection an idea, a rule or an explanation that suits similar situations.
4. Active experimentation. The learner tries the conclusion in a new situation, and that attempt becomes the start of the next cycle.

The stages are drawn as a circle because the end of the last stage is the start of the first. That does not mean that all learning passes through the stages in the same order or for the same length of time. A learner may begin at a stage other than the first, and the stages can overlap within one situation.

The source of the model

The model is associated with Kolb’s book “Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development”, published by Prentice Hall in 1984. We verified the details of the book in the Crossref record of a review by Leonie Sugarman in the Journal of Organizational Behavior in 1987 (volume 8, issue 4, pages 359 and 360), which gives the title, the publisher, the year and the number of pages. We did not read the text of the book, so we quote no wording from it and we do not claim that our description of the stages matches it word for word.

A 2022 article by Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb is titled “Experiential Learning Theory as a Guide for Experiential Educators in Higher Education”. According to its abstract in the Crossref record, it describes the learning cycle, learning style and learning space as core concepts of experiential learning theory that educators in higher education have used for nearly half a century. That abstract concerns use in higher education. What we say about the workplace is an application in our own wording, not taken from a specific reference. We do not cover the concept of learning style and draw no claim from it.

How the cycle is used for learning in an establishment

The value of the cycle in an establishment is that it reminds designers that learning is not complete once the experience has happened. The stages appear in several practices:

• Learning at work. In training on the job, an employee learns tasks by performing them under the direction of a trainer. This supplies the first stage in its realistic form. A short meeting in which the employee is asked what happened and what will be tried next supplies the stages that follow.
• A scene and its debrief. In role play training, a scene is followed by observations. The scene is the experience, and the observations cover the stages of reflection and forming a rule.
• Questioning sessions. A coach asks questions so that the employee reaches an agreed goal without being told the answer; see coaching. The steps of a session, from checking reality to generating alternatives to committing to a step, resemble the stages of reflection, forming a rule and trying it.
• After a programme. What happens after a programme ends and the employee returns to work includes the fourth stage, when the employee tries what was learned in actual work.
• Spread sessions. When sessions are spread out, as in spaced practice, the intervals between them can leave room to try something and then return with what emerged.

How the cycle differs from the ADDIE model

Training programmes are designed in stages, from identifying the need to evaluation, as the ADDIE model describes. That model concerns the establishment that builds the programme, whereas the Kolb cycle describes how an individual learns from experience. The two do not conflict. A programme designer can use the cycle when deciding, at the design stage, that each experiential activity is followed by time for reflection and then for forming a rule.

A hypothetical example: a training session in numbers

Take a hypothetical workshop of 60 minutes for customer service employees at a hypothetical establishment, designed on the four stages. It has 25 minutes to simulate a complaint call, 15 minutes to reflect on what happened, 10 minutes to form a rule and 10 minutes to plan an experiment. The total is 25 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 60 minutes. The share of reflection is 15 ÷ 60 = 25%, and the share of experience is 25 ÷ 60 = 41.7%.

The workshop ended with a rule: “We ask the customer to restate the problem before we propose a solution.” In the following week one employee tried the rule in 10 calls. Before the workshop the employee had needed a second call in three of six complaint calls, which is 3 ÷ 6 = 50%. After trying the rule, the employee needed a second call in two of 10, which is 2 ÷ 10 = 20%. The difference is 50 minus 20 = 30 percentage points.

That difference does not prove an effect of the rule. The numbers are small, the calls may have differed in difficulty between the two weeks, and the employee may have been more attentive during the experiment. The example shows that the cycle produced something that can be compared and tracked, which is what the fourth stage allows.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate. They do not represent an establishment or a study, and the example does not mean that a workshop with these timings or this result is customary.

Questions that suit each stage

These questions are our proposal, and they are adapted to the situation:

• After the experience. What exactly did you do? What happened after each step?
• During reflection. What went as you expected, and what went against it? What did you feel at that moment?
• When forming a rule. What repeats in this situation and in earlier ones? What rule can I take from it?
• When experimenting. Where will I try this rule, when will I try it, and how will I know that it helped?

The stages in one work task

Consider a new accountant at a hypothetical establishment who is assigned the monthly bank reconciliation for the first time. The accountant prepares it and finds differences that the accountant does not understand. That is the experience. The accountant then sits with a more senior colleague, shows the differences and asks which may be timing differences and which errors. That is the reflection.

The accountant concludes that what caused the confusion was differences in the timing of deposits, and sets a rule of comparing entry dates before amounts. That is forming a rule. The accountant then tries the rule in the next month’s reconciliation and notes what changed. That is the experiment. The differences and the timing here are an illustration, and they do not mean that a reconciliation task proceeds this way at every establishment.

Where the model is limited

• It describes the individual and not the setting. It does not say whether an employee’s job allows time for reflection or permits trying the conclusion. Workplace factors of this kind are dealt with under training transfer.
• It assumes a capacity to reflect. A new employee may need someone to help with questions in order to reflect.
• It needs time. If a session is cut short, reflection or the formation of a rule may be dropped and the experience left unexamined, and the cycle has then not been applied.
• It does not cover all forms of learning. Some of what an employee learns comes from reading or from watching others, and it does not pass through a personal experience.

The role of the direct manager

A direct manager can provide the stages of reflection and experimentation, because the manager knows the employee’s work and sees it after the experience. After a new task, two questions can be enough. The first is “What did you notice?”, which is the reflection question. The second is “What will you do differently next time?”, which is the experimentation question. The manager then returns after the next task and asks what happened when the employee tried it.

This needs no training programme. It needs the manager to set aside a short time and not to turn the questions into an interrogation.

How the cycle is misused

• Dropping reflection. A session becomes one experience after another, and nobody asks what the learner took from it.
• Supplying the conclusion in finished form. The trainer presents the rule before the learner has reflected, and the cycle becomes a lecture by another name.
• Applying the stages rigidly. Every activity is held to the stages in the same order and for the same time, which may not suit every situation.
• Treating the cycle as an explanation of all learning. It is one of several models for describing learning, and what is said about the workplace needs testing in each establishment.
• Forgetting the last experiment. A programme ends with a plan, and nobody checks whether the plan was carried out.

The effect of the cycle on learning results

We adopt no measured effect of following the cycle on training results. In the sources we reviewed, we found no published figure for such an effect, and we propose no figure of our own. The cycle serves as a framework for designing activities and for the questions put at each one, and the result of each programme is measured in the establishment concerned. Design comes after identifying what employees need, which is the work of training needs analysis.

The Kolb cycle remains a way of reminding those who design learning that experience alone is not enough. It points to a stage that can be dropped from a session, and what is decided afterwards rests on what employees need and on the nature of the work they are learning.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.