Dale’s Cone of Experience

Bryan L. Guibijar
Activity

Activating Prior Knowledge

Study the Cone of Experience given
below. Analyze how the elements are
arranged from the bottom upward or
top- down and put your ideas to
Analysis
• How are the experiences of reality organized in the Cone of Experience?

• Which way is farthest away from the real world, in this sense, most abstract?

• Is the basis of the arrangement of experiences difficulty of experience or amount of abstraction (the
amount of immediate sensory participation involved)?

• Does the Cone of Experience design mean that all teaching and learning must move systematically
from base to pinnacle?

• Can you overemphasize the amount of direct experience that is required to learn a new concept?

• How can you, as a future teacher, can use the Cone of Experience to maximize learning?

• Identify the bands of the Cone of learning that belong to passive and active learning categories

Passive Active
 Edgar Dale (1946) introduced Cone of Experience that reveals the development
of experiences from the very real to the extremely abstract (at the top of the Cone). The
Cone of Experience intends to notify students of how much a person‘s recall established
on how they face the material.
The Cone charts the average retention rate of the knowledge for various teaching
methods. The further down the Cone you move, the higher the learning, and the more
knowledge is likely to be retained. It also indicates that it is important to note when
selecting an instructional method that engaging students in the process can improve the
retention of information. This shows that strategies of ―action-learning‖ result in the
retention of up to 90 percent. Individuals learn better by using visual types of learning.
Perceptual types of learning are based on feelings. The more sensory channels are
possible in interacting with a resource, the better chance that many students can learn
from it (Diamond, 1989). According to Dale (1969), two teachers should develop lessons
that draw on more real-life experiences. Dale‘s Cone of Experience is a device that helps
teachers make resource and activity choices.
Edgar Dale‘s Cone of Experience gives the following interpretation:

1. Lower levels of the Cone involve the student as a participant and encourage active
learning.
2. Pictures are remembered better than verbal propositions.
3. The upper levels of the Cone need more instructional support than lower levels.
4. Abstractness increases as we go up the Cone, and concreteness increases as we go
down the Cone.
5. Higher levels compress information and provide data faster for those who can
process it.
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
1. Direct Purposeful Experience - Some experiences have the least abstractness and
the maximum possible concreteness. Purposeful means interactions of one intent are
meaningful. Skills we gained in real life through our first-hand, direct involvement.
In a teaching-learning cycle, it is the best mode, means, or channels for the desired
outcomes. Teachers will also strive to provide the students with real-life realistic
experiences in the form of showing actual objects and enabling them to come into
direct contact with the realities of life themselves. Examples allow students to
prepare their meals, make a PowerPoint presentation, delivering a speech,
performing experiments, or making their furniture.
2. Contrived Experiences - These are not very rich, concrete, and direct as a real-life
experience. When the real thing cannot be accurately observed, artificial stimuli can
be given as a working model or as specific experiments in the laboratory. The
working model is the editing of fact, which varies in size or complexity from the
original. It includes models, mock-ups, experiments, and so on. We may delete the
needless information in a condensed and edited version of the real thing, and make
the learning simple. A mock-up of Apollo, the moon exploration spacecraft, for
example, allowed the North American Aviation Co. to research the lunar flight
problem.
Examples of Contrived Experiences:
Model- A replication in a small scale or a large scale or exact
size of a real item- but made of synthetic materials. It is a
substitute for a real item that may or may not be operational –
Gray, et. In 1969, al.

Mockup- Is an arrangement of a real device or associated

devices displayed in such a way that representation of reality is
created. A unique model where the parts of a model are singled
out, heightened and magnified to focus on that part or process
under study. Example: Planetarium

Specimen- An individual animal, plant, piece of a mineral, etc.

It is used as an example of its species or type for scientific
study or display. An example is a product or piece of work,
regarded as typical of its class or group—a sample for medical
testing, especially of urine.
Examples of Contrived Experiences:
Object- May also include artifacts displayed in a museum or
objective displayed in exhibits or preserved insect specimens in
science.

Simulation- A representation of a real manageable event in

which the learner is an active participant engage in learning
behavior or in applying previously acquired skills or
knowledge
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
3. Dramatized Experiences – The experience gained through active participation and
role-playing in dramatic activities. Activities in which visual representation and role-
playing depict the actual events of the past or present. It is useful in the teaching-
learning of subjects like history, political science, language, and literature. The pupil
who takes part in dramatization gets closer to direct experience than a student who
watches it. The plays can be a variety of forms, such as full-length play, one-act play,
puppet show, pageants (a kind of group drama focused on local history), mime,
tableau, dialogs, spot-spontaneous acting, and mock conventions, etc. We revive the
eruption of the revolution in the Philippines by playing the role of characters in a
drama.
Plays - depict life, character, culture, or a combination of the
three. They offer excellent opportunities to portray vividly
essential ideas about life.

Pageants are usually community dramas that are based on local

history. An example is a historical pageant that traces the
growth of a school.

Pantomime is a "method of conveying a story by bodily

gestures." Pantomime's impact on the audience rely on the
actors' movements.
Tableau is a picture-like scene composed of people against a
background. It is an arrangement of people who do not move or
speak, especially on a stage, who represents a view of life, an
event, etc.

Role-Playing is an unrehearsed, unprepared, and spontaneous

dramatization of a situation where their roles absorb assigned
participants. You pretend to be someone else or pretend to be in
a particular position you are not really in at the moment.

Puppets - A puppet is an inanimate object or representational

figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called
a puppeteer. Puppets can present ideas with extreme simplicity.
Types of Puppets
Shadow puppets – flat, black silhouette made from lightweight
cardboard shown behind a screen.

Rod puppets – flat, cut-out figures tacked to a stick with one or

more movable parts, and are operated below the stage through
wires or rods.

Glove-and-finger puppets – make use of gloves in which small

costumed figures are attached.
Types of Puppets
Marionettes – a flexible, jointed puppet operated by strings or
wires attached to a crossbar and maneuvered from directly
above the stage.
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
4. Demonstrations – It‘s a visual description of a significant reality, concept, or
process. Students can watch how certain things are done either in the form of actual
objects or models. Specific complicated procedures can be performed by the teacher
for the benefit of pupils who are reduced to the position of passive listeners. For
better performance, the teacher should try to involve the students in the
demonstration process by asking questions and answering them or by helping them
plan the demonstration and execute it. For example, a teacher in Physical Education
shows the class how to dance the tango.
5. Study Trips – It is a planned point visit or a location outside the daily classroom.
This is an organized situation in the form of tours, flights, hikes, and excursions.
Provide the students with valuable opportunities to offer direct real-life experiences.
Learning several principles, gaining relevant information, knowledge, and skills (in
combination with lots of entertainment) related to the school‘s various issues;
curriculum. We put the classroom back into the community and the community‘s
concerns back into the school.
Sample title for your study trips
• Science Museum Trip - Science Field Trip
• Historical Reenactment Trip - Living History Field Trip Eco-
Adventure Trip - Biology Field Trip
• Museum of Natural History Trip - Social Science Field Trip Reward
Trip - Celebration/Fun Field Trip
• Aviation Museum Trip - Military History Field Trip Heritage
Museum Trip- Culture Field Trip
• Historic Church Trip - Religious Field Trip
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
6. Exhibits – Bring the outside world into the classroom employing exhibits, the
concrete representation of the things. The teacher can help the students by gaining
useful experience through the observation and organization of educationally
significant exhibitions. Exhibits are less real or direct in terms of providing direct
practical experience. These may consist of meaningfully organized working models
or photographs of templates, maps, and posters. Many exhibitions are ―only for
your eyes.‖ However, several shows provide interactive opportunities in which
visitors can touch or manipulate the displayed models.
7. Television and motion pictures – Television and movie clips can so expertly
recreate the history of the past, that we have to feel like we‘re there.The special
meaning of the messages that film and television deliver lies in their sense of reality,
their focus on individuals and personality, their organization presenta¬tion, and their
ability to select, dramatize, highlight, and clarify.
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
8. Still, pictures, Recordings, Radio - This stage includes the number of devices that
might be classified roughly as one-dimensional aids because they use only one sense
organ that is either eye (seeing) or ear (hearing). All these materials are less direct
than audio-visual experiences.
9. Visual symbols - There are no longer practical reproductions of material objects, for
such representations are incredibly abstract. Visible concepts that describe something
intangible by association and something that reflects or stands for something else,
usually by association or by way of definition of something abstract. Visual
perception has a predictive framework that is interesting. This contains visual graphic
resources such as charts, maps, diagrams, sketches, posters, comics, photos, drawings
on blackboards, and illustrations. The visual symbols (free to use any language) form
a primary contact language.
Drawings - A drawing might not be a real thing but better than
nothing to have practical visual help. To prevent ambiguity, it is
important that the real thing is depicted correctly by our
drawing.

Cartoons The cartoon is another useful visual symbol which

can add innovation to our teaching. Metaphorically a first-rate
cartoon reveals its story.

Strip drawings - A series of sketches linked to a funny story or

an adventure in a newspaper, magazine, etc .. It is a series of
adjacent, typically horizontally organized images which are
intended to be read as a narrative or a sequential sequence.
Diagrams - It is any line drawing that shows arrangement and
relations as of parts to the whole, relative values, origins and
development, chronological fluctuations, distributions, etc.
(Dale, 1969)
Types of Diagrams
Affinity Diagram - used to cluster complex apparently
unrelated data into natural and meaningful groups. An affinity
diagram is to arrange ideas into a specific or natural
relationship. Bananas, bananas, and oranges, for example,
would be grouped as fruits while green beans, broccoli, and
carrots would be grouped as vegetables.
Tree Diagram – A tree diagram is a modern method for
planning management that defines the hierarchy of tasks and
subtasks required to complete and be objective. The tree
diagram begins with one element, then branches out to two or
more, each branching into two or more, and so on. The finished
diagram is like a tree, with a trunk and many branches.
Fishbone Diagram - Often referred to as the cause and effect
diagram or Ishikawa diagram is a visualization method for
categorizing the possible causes of the root cause of the issue.
A fishbone diagram usually used for root cause analysis
incorporates the brainstorming technique with a form of mind
map design.
Charts - It is a diagrammatic representation of individual
connections within an organization.
Types of Charts
Time Chart a tabular time diagram displaying data in ordinal
series.
Types of Charts
Tree or Stream Chart shows creation, growth and change
starting with a simple course spreading out over several
branches

Flowchart visual way of showing a process from beginning to

end. A diagram of the series of individual gestures or acts or
events involved in a complex structure or operation.
Types of Charts
Organizational Chart Shows how one part of the company
applies to other sections. It is a graphical representation of the
structure which shows the relationships within the positions or
jobs.

Comparison and Contrast Chart shows similarities and

differences.
Types of Charts
Pareto chart Is a type of bar chart, prioritized from left to right
in decreasing order of magnitude or importance

Gannt chart is an activity time chart. A diagram displaying a

sequence of horizontal lines representing the amount of work
completed or produced during different periods to the amount
expected for those periods
Graphs - Pictures helping us to understand the details. A
diagram showing the relationship between the variable
quantities, usually two variables, each calculated at the right
angles along with one of a pair of axes.
Circle Graph –A visual representation of data made by
dividing a circle into sectors that each represent parts of a
whole. Usually, the amounts in each area are expressed in
percent, so that all of the amounts total of 100%.

Bar Graph – Using to compare the magnitude of the same

things at different relations or to see the relative sizes of the
entire pieces. Also, the numerical values of variables are
represented by the height or length of lines or rectangles of
equal width.
Pictorial Graph – a visual representation of data by using
pictograms. It uses icons or pictures in relative sizes to
highlight some data patterns and trends.

Graphic organizers – In your subject, you've encountered

many graphic leaders, teaching values. Also known as
knowledge map, idea map, story map, cognitive organizer,
advance organizer, or idea diagram, this is a pedagogical
method that uses visual symbols to communicate knowledge
and concepts through interactions between them.
Maps - Is a reflection of the earth's surface or a part thereof.
Physical Map Is altitude, temperature, precipitation, rainfall,
vegetation, and soil. A diagram of known iconic places on
chromosomes. In base pairs, the actual distance is determined
between landmarks.
Relief Map is a three dimensional represents and shows
contours of the physical data of the earth or part of the earth. It
is indicating hills and valleys by shading rather than by contour
lines alone, also elevations and depressions representing hills
and valleys, typically on an exaggerated relative scale.
Political maps are reference maps commonly used. They 're put
worldwide on the walls of classrooms. They display the
geographical boundaries between units of government, such as
nations, states, and counties. We show highways, cities, and
significant water features like oceans, rivers, and lakes.
Poster - A large printed picture, photograph, or notice that you
stick or pin to a wall or board, usually for decoration or to
advertise something.
What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience?
10. Verbal symbols - They are not like the artifacts or concepts they stand for. They do
not generally contain visual references to their meaning. To express any meaning,
verbal representations are words, phrases, sounds, or other utterances that are spoken
aloud. The verbal symbol may be a phrase, an idea, a concept, a scientific theory, a
formula, a philosophical aphorism, or some other representation of the experience
listed in any verbal symbolization. Published terms fall into that range. It may be a
word for a concrete-object (book), an idea (freedom of speech), a scientific principle
(the principle of balance), a formula (e=mc2)
Dale's Cone of Experience as a tool to help my students build learning experiences.
The Cone of Experience corresponds with three significant modes of learning:

Enactive (direct experience),- Enactive or direct contact includes working with objects
(the student joins a knot to practice knot tying). The enactive perception requires direct
action and effective use of the senses and the body.
Iconic (pictorial experience) - Iconic learning includes reading photos and sketches (the
student looks at paintings, pictures, or movies to learn how to tie knots). Iconic
perception is separated from the world of science and limited to two or three senses.
Symbolic (highly abstract experience)- Symbolic experience involves reading or
hearing symbols (the student learns or hears the word ―knot‖ and forms an image in
mind). In symbolic experience, the action is removed nearly altogether, and the
experience is limited to thoughts and ideas.
Application
Reflect on the following questions.
1. Think about your most unforgettable learning experience. How was it (or how was it
not) a “rich experience” as defined by Dale?
2. Dale thought a rich experience would be “emotionally satisfying” and “motivate
[learners] to read throughout their lives.” Describe an experience you‘ve had that has
been emotionally satisfying and inspired you to continue learning throughout your
life.
3. Why does Dale recommend that teachers maximize their time by giving practical and
abstract opportunities to teach?
4. How does this instructional tool increase Textbook information?
Thank you