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”.
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.
reference: http://nerizonhenry.blogspot.com/2009/12/lesson-5-cone-of-experience.html
http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.Bilash/best%20of%20bilash/dalescone.html
