I lead experiential workshops. Why? You will learn more from an experience than a lecture. And the learning will stick.
Experiential means you participate in simulations rather than sit in a dark room watching a slide show and listening to a lecture. A simulation speeds up time: Six minutes participating in a simulation may trigger you to have the same experiences as six months in a project. The shorter duration enables you to see your experience—what you did externally and what was happening internally. You can process your experiences and choose whether to continue making the same choices.
A thorough debrief of what happened during each workshop is part of its design. During the debrief, you will learn from me, the other participants, and—most of all—from yourself.
Good thoughts. I agree that I like kinesthetic learning the best when it comes to learning. The act of ‘doing’ helps commit things to memory; nature has designed our minds to retain the things we ‘do’ especially the things we do repetitively. Have you studied much about VARK learning styles? I would guess that you still compliment what you teach in the experience with other read/write, visual materials for those that may have a preference for those types of learning? I also really like the idea of sharing during the debrief, as oftentimes we may not adopt others points of view until presented to us. Those other points of view may help unlock other thoughts and learnings within ourselves.
Mark, I haven’t studied VARK. But I see information about it on the web. I’ll check it out.
I do compliment my workshops with other materials to round out the experience for participants with different preferences.
I suggest you check out the AYE Conference. It’s great conference, which features experiential learning.
Thank you for the feedback,
Steve