Counterintuitively, when we’re learning a lot, we sometimes don’t even realize it.
For example, in an experiential learning situation, people rate their personal learning lower than in a lecture-based situation. But, when tested later, the experiential context led to more learning than the lecture.
More simply, when we’re in a lecture, we think we’re learning more than we actually are. When we’re doing experiential learning, we think we’re learning less than we actually are.
I think the implications for education are clear: we need more experience-driven learning. Just like any short-term fix, a lecture may feel good at first, but in the long run, it’s not serving us like we thought it would.