Lesson 1

Dale’s Cone of Experience

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

• Explain comprehensively Dale's Cone of Experience and present
classroom practices that exemplify each level of the Cone.
• Present exemplars of the different instructional tools suitable for
an instructional setting.

Introduction
Next to the discussion on the ICT policies and safety issues in teaching and
learning, you will now understand and examine Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience to get
informed with various instructional media that form part of the system approach to
instruction.
The model of Dale’s Cone of Experience integrates several concepts associated
with the instructional model and learning processes. He emphasized that learners retain
more information by what they “do” as opposed to what is “heard,” “read,” or
“observed.” His studies caused the improvement of the Cone to revel. These days, this
“learning by doing” has become known as “experiential learning” or “action learning.”
As you immerse yourself in the lesson, you will discover the importance of the
Cone as you plan your lesson to make learning more productive and engaging to
students.
 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
the graphic organized
below

Source adapted from E. Dale, Audio-visual Methods in Teaching, 1969, NY: Dryden
Press.

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
 Abstraction

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.

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

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.
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 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.

Marionettes – a flexible, jointed puppet operated by strings or

wires attached to a crossbar and maneuvered from directly
above the stage.

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

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 [Link] 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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.
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

A. Based on the concepts presented above, design a lesson that will employ
activities that can be found on the bottom parts of the Cone of Experience,
particularly proving a direct, purposeful experience.

B. 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?

Closure

You did it! Now that you’ve already learned Cone of Experience’s
consequences for teaching and learning, you can now move on to the next lesson,
TPACK Framework for Effective Pedagogical Practice.