Lesson 5 : Cone of Experience

The Cone was originally developed by Edgar Dale in 1946. It 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).  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

The Cone of Experience is a visual model meant to summarise Dale’s classification system for the varied types of mediated learning experiences.

The original labels for Dale’s ten categories in the Cone of Experience were:

1.    Direct, Purposeful Experiences

2.    Contrived Experiences

3.    Dramatic Participation

4.    Demonstrations

5.    Field Trips

6.    Exhibits

7.    Motion Pictures

8.    Radio, Recordings, Still Pictures

9.    Visual Symbols and

10.  Verbal Symbols

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’ Dales called ‘the Cone of Experience’. In his book ‘Audio visual methods in teaching’ – 1957, he stated that the cone was not offered as a perfect or mechanically flawless picture to be taken absolutely literally. It was merely designed as a 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.

Dale points out that it would be a dangerous mistake to regard the bands on the cone as rigid, inflexible divisions.

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”

People Remember

It is said that people remember:

§  10% of what they read

§  20% of what they hear

§  30% of what they see

§  50% of what they see and hear

§  70% of what they write and say

§  90% of what they say as they do

The percentages –> 10% of what they read 20% of what they hear 30% of what they see 50% of what they hear and see 70% of what they say or write 90% of what they say as they do a thing are not from Dale. The bogus percentages appear to have been first published by an employee of Mobil Oil Company in 1967, writing in the magazine “Film and Audio-Visual Communications”.

These percentages have since been discredited. THEY ARE FICTION! This is one of the great training/ people development myths.

Old Chinese proverb

“What I hear, I forget;
What I see, I remember;
What I do, I understand.”

Stands true – but only again as a saying, and NOT as statistical fact.