Edgar Dale
Jesse Farbe
Mikayle Kartchner
Gisela Martiz
Edgar Dale
A brief history -
A brief history -
- Earned BS and MS from University of North Dakota through correspondence.
- Received a Ph.D. from University of Chicago (1929)
- Employed with Kodak studying learning from film
- Professor at Ohio State University (1929 - 1973)
- President of the Division of Visual Instruction (1937 - 1938) of the National Education Association, now known as Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT).
Social impacts -
- Wagner (1970), "He actively fought for better schools, academic freedoms, civil rights, and other causes long before these became popular issues".
- Dale also taught teachers that they should help their students learn how the media effects us, and to critically evaluate it.
Reference(s): Educational Technology v. 47 no. 6 p. 56-9
The Cone of Experience
The “cone of experience”, also known as “the cone of learning”, introduced by Edgar Dale in 1946, is considered his most important contribution and its theory is viewed the earliest development of the Instructional Technology field. In this cone, Dale classified the different types of learning experiences, from the bottom (active experiences) to the top (passive experiences).
Active experiences represent concrete ideas, while passive experiences represent abstract ideas. This cone shows the connection between them, which is an important principle of teaching and learning.
The cone shows relationship to learning and real life. As you go up in the cone you move away from real life experience.
With learning, the farther down the cone you go, the more you advanced skills a student should be able to do.
For example: Start with listing and move down the scone to analyzing. The more sensory channels available for the student to interact with in a classroom resource, the more likely the student can learn from the resource.
The cone of experience is seen as an effective tool in the communication and it also helps develop diversity in learning. For instance, it is brought up when referring to “active learning”, that is anything that students are able to do in the classroom besides listening to the teacher in a passive way. It deals with putting students in situations, living the experience which make them read, speak, listen, think deeply, and write.
The cone of experience is seen as a graphical presentation of how much people remember. It presents different levels of sense perceptions, that is, how our senses perceive experiences. Moreover, the way in that information is presented influence on our level of retention.
In current representations of the cone, numbers have been included, showing in percentages how much people remember after being involved in active and passive experiences. However, some researchers do not agree with them. For example, Will Thalheimer claims that these new cones are a fraud, since the original model had no numbers. They state that the percentages were added to the cone later on and their source is unknown. However, it has been said that the numbers were added to the cone by an employee of Mobil Oil Company, while he was working on a training program for instructors.
The two following images represent the two known versions about the Cone of Experience:
Authentic Cone of Experience (Dale, 1946)
Modern Cone of Experience
More information about the incongruencies between the original cone of experience and those including percentages and other modifications can be found at:
References:
Groups:
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Disclaimer
Any opinions expressed here, except as specifically noted, are those of the individual authors or commenters and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, or Utah State University.
