There are many questions about the research the Cone of Experience is based on. In my mind, I have dismissed it as invalid…until research supports it. I am curious though. I wonder what people believe. Has anyone ever reproduced his research or explored instructional activities for impact, retention, and transferability?
Dale’s Cone of Experience is a model that incorporates several theories related to instructional design and learning processes. During the 1960s, Edgar Dale theorized that learners retain more information by what they “do” as opposed to what is “heard”, “read” or “observed”. His research led to the development of the Cone of Experience. The Cone was originally developed in 1946 and was intended as a way to describe various learning experiences. Essentially, the Cone shows the progression of experiences from the most concrete (at the bottom of the cone) to the most abstract (at the top of the cone).
When Dale researched learning and teaching methods he found that much of what we found to be true of direct and indirect (and of concrete and abstract) experience could be summarised in a pyramid or ‘pictorial device’. He stated that the cone was not offered as a perfect or mechanically…
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To Talk Like This and Act Like That 