Team Building Asia held their 16th Anniversary Event entitled, “Team Building 2.0 – The Shift Towards Experiential Learning” on Friday 26th October 2018 at WeWork Offices in Shanghai.
Simien Lin lead a fascinating panel discussion with a trio of experiential enthusiasts consisting of, River, Nupower Group Founder and Facilitator, Tina Tian, AB InBev, People Sales Manager and Oliver Clark, Constructive.xyz.
Special take ways include Oliver who explained that we mostly work in 2D, on paper and on our desktop but that experiential learning takes us to 3D and 4D involving the senses and these feelings connect to synapses in the brain which promotes learning. Oliver further elaborated that traditional training is more for the training of skills whereas experiential learning creates knowledge.
River posed an interesting question to the audience, “Is learning painful or enjoyable?” This challenged the audience to consider that enjoyment comes when we have interest and experiential learning stimulates a lot of interest and makes the learning enjoyable.
Tina stated that experiential learning involves lots of interaction during the activity and that engagement and alignment comes through the debrief. She warned that facilitators need to be able to think on their feet and react at certain times. They need to preempt and be proactive, so you need to make sure you have the right fit of facilitator for the experiential learning to be effective.
This simulating discussion was followed by Harmonica Harmony, engaging participants to try out an experiential learning session of their own, followed by a lively debrief session, again led by Simien.