Applying Kolb's Model of Adult Learning

Title: Applying Kolb’s model of adult learning

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Introduction

This study involves the applications to Kolb’s model of adult learning whereby it discusses and explains the various behaviors portrayed by human beings during the learning process especially in the work environment whereby they interact with other people in a teamwork during the execution of various processes. The model also tries to explain how people behave while trying to assist other people to carry out various tasks.

The Kolb’s learning theory is explained in four styles which clearly indicates the different styles people use to learn something new in an organization perspective. The observations from the study can be used to generalize the attributes that reflected in almost every person whereby each person may prefer a certain style of learning. The following is the application or an experience in an organization according to the Koln’s learning styles or stages, which includes

Concrete experience (CE)

This comes by where a person new in an organization a new experience of doing something or whereby they may be familiar of have experienced the tasks before but the task is done in a new way.

Reflective observation (RO)

This is whereby one examines the inconsistencies that may be there between the introduction of new experience and the understanding.

Abstract conceptualization (AC) - This is whereby a person have a new idea of doing something in the already introduced experience

Active experimentation (AE) - the learners tries to practice or experiments the skills learned to try to find the results by themselves in different environment.

The above styles can be critically analyzed and applied in the following ways;

Diverging

This is mostly observed in the stage of concrete experience and the reflective observation.

This involves a person observing a certain process on how it goes about and the person becomes sensitive and emotional on it until there is a breakthrough. These people tend to take time studying a given process and they become so desperate to learn, although they are not actively involved in trying to execute by themselves. Their main part here involves coming up with ideas to help in new ways to solve a problem. For example in the construction of a building or any other project, the foreman may not be actively involved in building on the ground but may come up with idea to build a certain part in an easier way where the masons may be taking a long time to complete a given task. Also the people who learn through the concrete experience work well in situations where they can brainstorm on something and come up with a new plan of performing a certain task in an easier way

Assimilating

This involves a person watching a certain process and thinks much about how they can implement it. This is mainly applied in the stage of abstract conceptualization and reflective observation. These people just require to learn a logical way of performing a given task rather than to be actively involved in the physical work. That is the do not need to perform a task in order to understand. When the people gets a given explanation, they just conceptualize the required tasks and then thinks on how they can solve the problem. A good example is a software developer who may want to convert a manual operation into an automated operation. In this, they do not need to practically observe how the manual process operates, but all they need is just an explanation of how the process works. From here, they ca comfortably come up with ways they can program the operations and make a software doing the same task.

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