Dale’s Cone Experience
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. Today, this “learning
by doing” has become known as “experiential learning” or “action learning”.
Dale’s Cone of Experience has already
helped to remind us of some important ideas about communication, learning, and
concept development. Actually, Dale’s cone experience was
merely designed as visual aid to help explain the interrelationships of the
various types of audio-visual materials, as well as their individual
‘positions’ in the learning process. He said “The cone device is a visual
metaphor of learning experiences, in which the various types of audio-visual
materials are arranged in the order of increasing abstractness as one proceeds
from direct experiences”.
The
cone is based on the relationships of various educational experiences to reality
(real life) the bottom level of the cone, “direct purposeful experiences,” represents
reality or the closest things to real, everyday life. The opportunity for a
learner to use a variety or several senses (sight, smell, hearing, touching,
movement) is considered in the cone. Direct experience allows us to use all
senses. The more sensory channels possible in interacting with a resource, a better chance that many students can learn from it.
But,
perhaps, sometimes there are possible misconceptions about Cone.
1. Can
we overemphasize the amount of direct experience that is required to learn a
new concept?
Yes, this is a danger. Perhaps
the new abstraction can be mastered with less firsthand experience than we
might think necessary. Indeed, too much
reliance on concrete experience may actually obstruct the process of meaningful
generalization. Certainly a
mathematician could not develop a system of higher mathematics by counting on
his fingers.
2. Does
the Cone of Experience overemphasize instructional devices (the media of
communication) at the expense of subject matter (the message to be
communicated)?
Actually,
use of the Cone may lead to an enhancement of our subject matter
presentations. Indeed, the Cone may help
us to choose the instructional materials that are most appropriate for the
particular topic we wish to teach. The Cone can help us to understand these
relationships between media and the messages they convey. It suggests, in fact,
that various instructional materials differ in the degree of sensory experience
they are able to provide. Our selection of instructional materials, therefore,
will depend on the amount of sensory experience we wish to provide for a
particular topic of our lesson. And the Cone can help us "place" a
teaching method; it can help us select the way of communicating most suited to
the experience we wish to convey.
The Learning Pyramid
90%-75%-50%-30%-20%-10%
Quite where these numbers come from is a mystery
to many, and indeed it is difficult to understand what 90% retention actually
means… 90% of what for how long? As a model it looks and on first thought
appears to be credible, however as many of us will know some people have almost
100% retention for a considerable period of time if they read something, others
teach others from a structure or procedure which they themselves do not
understand!
In
conclusion, our understanding of the Cone of Experience, moreover, will remind
us of a fundamental principle for our teaching:
We do not use any one medium of communication in isolation. Rather, we use many instructional materials
to help the student conceptualize his experience so that he can deal with it
effectively. The Cone suggests that
concept development can proceed from experiences with any specific
instructional material. It often follows,
then, that the more numerous and varied the media we employ, the richer and
more secure will be the concepts we develop.
Well-chosen instructional materials of various kinds can provide a
variety of experiences that enhance the learning of a given subject for any
student at any given point in his continuing development.
We
conclude, then, Dale’s Cone of Experience is visual model, a pictorial
device that may help us to think critically about the ways in which concepts
are developed. Indeed, we may now be
able to apply our ideas about the relationships of interesting, meaningful
experiences and abstract, highly symbolic representations.
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1 komentar:
This is good, but you need to present your own comment on it (with some examples of application). What about the other issues (cooperative and colaborativbe learning, behaviorism, cognitivism, constarctivism? You are supposed to discuss them all here in your own blog.
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