Experiential Learning In Virtual Environments

Virtual learning starts to become a conscious choice again

When sharing how they've been doing over the past year, L&D leaders consistently tell me the same thing: "It's been a very busy year moving all of our curriculum online." 
 

Across industries, the impact of Covid-19 on learning and development (L&D) organizations has been fairly consistent. When lockdowns began in March 2020, L&D activity came to a screeching halt. L&D leaders were forced to take a step back and think through new ways to deliver L&D programs crucial for business continuity, as well as new content that was now necessary, such as Covid-19 safety training, work from home policies, new tools, management in remote setups, etc. At that stage, it was mostly a matter of getting things done - delivering programs while waiting for things to go back to normal. The initial expectation was that "normal" would return within a few months. Over time, however, the following realizations set in:
 

1. "Normal" was not returning as quickly as expected;
2. Online L&D had to be embraced and improved - especially as Zoom fatigue set in;
3. To be effective, online L&D had to be engaging and experiential - even more so than in-person programs.

Currently, L&D teams are continuing the hard work of tackling these challenges and have realized that even when the health situation gets better, they must rethink in-person gatherings, training programs and events. While acknowledging that times are tough, many L&D leaders have also expressed that there is a silver lining: mental and organizational barriers regarding online learning have dropped and turnaround time on delivering programs has been greatly reduced.

With this in mind, WDHB has invested significant time and energy researching and testing experiential learning in the virtual world. Over the past year, we have completed several virtual Learning Expeditions, hackathons and online leadership programs. As a result, we want to share what we've learned on how to keep experiential alive in online learning and leadership development programs.

This article presents our principles and approach to virtual experiential learning.

Principles of Experiential Learning

Research into experiential learning literature, 40+ years of combined experience from WDHB (in strategic discovery through experiential programs) and Experience to Lead (in leadership development experiences) have led us to formulating the following principles of experiential learning.

Emotional
Experiential learning programs engage the head and the heart. It is now widely acknowledged that emotion significantly influences human cognitive processes, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning and problem-solving. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps optimize information retrieval efficiency (see our podcast episode on what happens in the brain when we learn). 

As L&D designers, it is vital to incorporate elements beyond the purely rational: personal stories, engagement of the senses in learning, etc. It's about engaging participants emotionally and authentically in a psychologically safe setting.

Active and Interactive
Research shows that action-oriented concepts best facilitate the learning of even very complex competence units. When learners take initiative and make decisions during the learning process, they are far more likely to remember the concepts that they learned. Self-direction also generates accountability, helping learners bridge the gap between concepts learned during a program and their real-life implementation.

Immersive
While it's been recently reduced to the use of artificial environment and virtual reality, immersive learning in a virtual setting relies on intentionality in the design of the learning environment and the contents of the learning. The goal is to provide learners with an engaging environment that removes everyday logistics concerns and puts them into a microcosm that replicates the stimulation and unpredictability of the natural world.

Reflective
Most experiential learning design refers to Kolb's reflective model which states that a concrete experience (feeling) is followed by reflective observation (watching), abstract conceptualization (thinking) and then active experimentation (doing). Experiential learning programs in any setting must dedicate enough time and space for individual and group reflection to solidify the experience and allow for processing and, ultimately, convergence.

Relationship-oriented
In essence, experiential learning is community-based learning. The collective dimension of a shared experience is key in triggering emotions, generating interactivity and contributing to the feeling of immersion. Moreover, by building two-way dialogues rather than the traditional instructor model and incorporating collective problem-solving exercises into programs, L&D designers help nurture relationships that contribute to learning continuity.

Self-exploring
While the collective dimension of experiential learning is key, enabling participants to draw direct links between the program and their own personal and professional journey is the condition that generates accountability and results in behavior change. Relating scenarios to the learner's personal life makes the lessons more "sticky" and plays an important role in making a virtual world feel truly immersive. Hence, it's paramount to create the conditions for participants to explore their relation to self and others in any virtual learning program.

Metaphorical
Because metaphors typically contain an element of surprise, they play an interesting role in the encoding and assimilation of information. Metaphors allow for new information to be more concrete and easier to imagine, while also enabling it to become more memorable. Metaphors invite participants to have a fresh outlook on the concepts they are learning and to actively engage in bridging the gap between the metaphor and the more concrete concept.

Challenges and Opportunities of Virtual Experiential Learning

Over the past year, we have encountered challenges while seeking to stay true to our principles of experiential learning while designing and delivering virtual programs. Through practical experimentation, we have concluded that while virtual setups make it harder to bring in certain elements of real-life experience, there are several ways to bring in experiential elements to overcome the challenges of online-only learning. Most importantly, rather than only compensating for the lack of in-person interaction and trying to replicate the in-person experience, designers and facilitators of online L&D programs should focus on taking advantage of some of the unique opportunities presented by the virtual setup.

In virtual setups, it's more challenging to:

Remain in immersion
It's not easy maintaining a sense of immersion while learning at home, literally in our comfort zone with distractions just one click away. Moreover, Zoom fatigue is real and learner disengagement is a high risk during online programs.

Encourage informal connection
Informal interactions are a core part of the learning process. They help contextualize the content and bring an emotional, connected dimension to learning. However, screen mediation makes the informal, the "accidental", the spontaneous more scarce and less natural.

Create emotion
Our senses play a big role in our discovery process and are often the unsung heroes of the learning process. Engaging our senses, switching locations and contexts are all part of the learning designer's task, made harder by the limitations of computer-mediated setups.

Overcoming the Challenges

Tools for engagement
There are various tools available to maintain learner engagement: VR/AR improvements provide opportunities for targeted immersions, but beyond that, clever L&D design should focus on tempo changes, gaming techniques and visual storytelling to make programs more engaging.

Designers and facilitators must leverage the right tools in the right context and right amount in order to avoid the trap of being too gimmicky and unnecessarily complicated. Sometimes, less is more. For instance, we're seeing a rise in popularity of audio-only content in order help learners focus only on what is needed at that time and not overload them with information.

Some razzle-dazzle
Surprise is important and habit is one of the killers of learning. There is a huge opportunity to find the little things that enchant learners. Take a clue from UX design: the user experience should be seamless,  but a bit of unexpected sparkle here and there, or a touch of humor, brings attention back when it's diminishing. Theatrics, art, music and impromptu moments can go a long way to delivering a memorable program.

Let it go
Whether in-person or online, it is important to remember that people have diverse attention spans and different ways of learning. It's important to provide programs in a variety of formats, contents, delivery modes, etc. to enable people to pick and choose what works best for them. Virtual setups are inherently more flexible, but also require L&D designers, trainers and facilitators to let go of the illusion of control and let the learner manage their own progress, insights and takeaways.

In virtual set-ups, it's easier to:

Bring diversity
By freeing ourselves from the time and location constraints of in-person, we can create new opportunities for diversity. With content being location-independent, the learnings can now come from anywhere in the world. Additionally, virtual setups provide the opportunity to make content available to a wider audience so more learners can benefit. During the past year of virtual delivery, we've sometimes seen learners bring their spouse and children along with them to online learning sessions thus bridging the gap between their professional and personal lives. The diversity of platforms, artifacts and tools enable the learning providers to always have something new and unexpected in store for their audience.

Focus on self
While learning is often a collective process, it is important to take time for individual reflection in order to enable appropriation. Away from the hustle of the office, learning-from-home can provide more opportunities for self-reflection. Additionally,, the ability to mix the asynchronous with the synchronous, the individual with the collective, can enable more flexibility and adaptation to each learner's context.

Generate accountability
Virtual setups generally allow participants to work at their own pace and commit to their own learning process. From a learning design standpoint, the ability to space virtual learning sessions out more than in-person programs allows for more pre-work, more solo experimentation and more back-and-forth between theory and practice, resulting in stronger impact.

In Summary:

Our Recommendations to Bring Experiential Learning to life in Virtual Setups.

Find the Right Balance for Engagement

• Use engagement tools - there's a profusion of options to explore
• Search for novelty - the unexpected is an important driver of learning
• Avoid becoming gimmicky
• Less is more - engagement also comes from not overwhelming the senses 

Become More Learner-Centric

• Virtual setups provide many opportunities to adapt to an individual's preferred ways of learning (pacing content, varied delivery formats, more asynchronous, etc.)
• Stronger individual focus generates more ownership and accountability
• Bridging the gap between work, life and learning might take us closer to the 10-20-70 balance (the lines are more blurred between personal and professional, between work time and learning time in virtual setups than in traditional in-person programs) 

Maintain the Basics

• Strong, engaging content is vital for in-person and online programs
• Emphasis on the flow and red thread that ties it all together
• Learning that fits the needs of the people (gathering expectations beforehand, continuous assessment, follow-up) 

An Opportunity to Experiment

• Now is the time to try new things in technology as well as in design and facilitation
• Focus on encouraging learners to generate ideas and suggestions so that the L&D programs are not "just another conference call"
• Join a community and get support from peers - most L&D teams are experimenting and learning to do things in new ways

Additional Resource
Experiential Learning in Virtual Environments | WDHB

	Imane Terrab is Chief Advisory Officer at WDHD. Imane joined WDHB in 2008, and has worked as a Program Manager and as Head of Design and Research, before leading WDHB’s development and strategy.  Visit www.wdhb.com Connect Imane Terrab
	Caitlin Leahy is Head of Product Innovation & Design at WDHD. Visit www.wdhb.com Connect Caitlin Leahy