What is Dale’s Cone of Experience?

The Cone was originally developed by Edgar Dale in 1946 and was intended as a way to describe various learning experiences. The diagram presented to the right (Raymond S. Pastore, Ph.D) is a modification of Dale’s original Cone; the percentages given relate to how much people remember and is a recent modification. 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). It is important to note that Dale never intended the Cone to depict a value judgment of experiences; in other words, his argument was not that more concrete experiences were better than more abstract ones. Dale believed that any and all of the approaches could and should be used, depending on the needs of the learner.

 

How should the Cone be interpreted?

The figure above shows what students will be able to do at each level of the Cone (the learning outcomes they will be able to achieve) relative to the type of activity they are doing (reading, hearing, viewing images, etc.). The numerical figures on the left side of the image, what people will generally remember, indicate that practical, hands-on experience in a real-life context will allow students to remember best what they do. Again, it is important to remember that this doesn’t mean reading and listening are not valuable learning experiences, simply that “doing the real thing” can lead to the retention of the largest amount of information. This is in part because those experiences near the bottom of the Cone, closer to and including real-world experiences, make use of more of our senses; it is believed that the more senses that are used, the greater our ability to learn from and remember an event or experience.

 

How can Dale’s Cone be used to enhance SL learning?

As stated above, the Cone should not be interpreted as indicating that teachers shouldn’t make use of reading, listening, viewing experiences and the like. These are all valuable and important parts of learning a second language and all have a place in the B-SLIM model. What should be taken from reviewing Dale’s Cone of Experience is that experiences at ALL of the levels described should be used in the second language classroom. Just as Gardner describes the Multiple Intelligences and appealing to them all, Dale’s Cone emphasizes learning experiences that appeal to the different senses and the different ways in which we learn. Direct parallels can be drawn between the different levels of experience depicted in the Cone and the stages of the B-SLIM model. When looking at Figure 2 (from Alabama Professional Development Modules) to the right, the first 6 types of experience (from the top of the cone downward) are all part of the Getting It and Using It stages of B-SLIM. The real-world experiences at the bottom of the Cone relate directly to the Proving It stage; it is at this stage of the model that students are encouraged to use what they have learned in new, real-life contexts.

All about: Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective (Ertmer & Newby 1993)

march 23, 2007

Ertmer, P.A. & Newby, T.J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50-72. (abstract)

Behaviourism – learning (knowledge) takes the form of a response to stimuli (eg teacher holds up a flash card that says 4 + 2 = and the student says 6) – the primary focus is how the association between the stimulus and response is made, strengthed and maintained. Responses followed by reinforcement are more likely to recur in the future.

How Behaviourism is relevant to instructional design:

·        An emphasis on producing observable and measurable outcomes in students [behavioural objectives, task analysis, criterion-reference assessment]

·      Pre-assessment of students to determine where instruction should begin [learner analysis]

·      Emphasis on mastering early steps before progressing to more complex levels of performance [sequencing of instructional presentation, mastery learning]

·      use of reinforcement to impact performance [tangible rewards, informative feedback]

·      Use of cues, shaping and practice to ensure a strong stimulus-response association [simple to complex sequencing of practice, use of prompts]

Stimulus is about something that the learner needs to know – generally as a question or an instruction to complete a task, the response is the answer or the successful completion of the task. Cues can be presented to facilitate the learning needed to create the correct response – examples of the correct answer or way to do something and repetition and reinforcement lead to the correct response being provided without the learner needing to rely on cues.

Cognitivism – this focusses more on more complex cognitive processes such as thinking, problem solving, language, concept formation and information processing.

It seems to be about equipping learners with effective learning strategies to process the information that they are given – as well as factoring in the students own beliefs and thought processes in interpreting/measuring how well they understand the knowledge.

Much more emphasis on connecting prior knowledge (which might not be exactly the same but close) to new knowledge – use of analogy to make new concepts seem familiar more quickly.

Sort of about identifying patterns which could be useful in problem solving by showing the learner what information they need to access to deal with a new situation that may resemble something they already know.

Techiques in the Cognitivist approach:

• Emphasis on the active involvement of the learner in the learning process [learner control, metacognitive training (e.g. self-planning, monitoring and revising techniques) 
• Use of hierarchical analyses to identify and illustrate prerequisite relationships [cognitive task analysis procedures.
• Emphasis on structuring, organising and sequencing information to facilitate optimal processing [use of cognitive strategies such as outlining, summaries, synthesisers, advance organisers]
• Creation of learning environments that allow and encourage students to make connections with previously learned material [ recall of prerequisite skills, use of relevant examples, analogies]

Cognitivism seems to be more about making knowledge more meaningful by helping learners link it to existing knowledge. Learning needs to be more tailored to the learners needs and abilities. Use of analogies and metaphors is one cognitive strategy. Other cognitive strategies include the use of framing, mnemonics, concept mapping, advance organisers and so forth.

If the teacher does the work in shaping the information so that it is more easily absorbed by the learner, the learner still seems like a fairly passive participant in this process, just a better taught one.

Constructivism - Knowledge “is a function of how the individual creates meaning from his or her experiences”

Most cognitive psychologists think of the mind as a reference tool to the real world; constructivists believe that the mind filters input from the world to produce it’s own unique reality.

Is this to suggest that cognitivists take a near solipsistic view of the world and assume that all knowledge is already held in the mind? My understanding of cognitivism from the earlier part of the article suggests nothing of the sort.

The evolution of educational philosophies here seems at best to be that greater attention is paid to the (probably ever-present) ability of the learner to filter received information and process it.

Of course people apply their own experiences to data that they take in and of course they make links to other similar knowledge that they have in the course of giving it meaning, which is unavoidably personal. Encouraging and stimulating this is a sound method for encouraging learning but it’s hardly been invented in the last 20 years.

Constructivists do not share with cognitivists and behaviourists the belief that knowledge is mind-independent and can be “mapped” onto a learner. Constructivists do not deny the existence of the real world but contend that what we know of the world stems from our own interpretations of our experiences. Humans create meaning as opposed to acquiring it. Since there are many possible meanings to acquire from any experience, we cannot achieve a predetermined “correct”meaning.