Cone of Experience Michael Molenda Indiana University DRAFT Submitted for publication in A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson, Ed's, Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Copyright ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, CA, 2003. This version includes only the text of the article. The figures are found in the published version. Introduced by Edgar Dale (1946) in his textbook on audiovisual methods in teaching, the Cone of Experience is a visual device meant to summarize Dale’s classification system for the varied types of mediated learning experiences. The organizing principle of the Cone was a progression from most concrete experiences (at the bottom of the cone) to most abstract (at the top). The original labels for Dale’s ten categories are: Direct, Purposeful Experiences; Contrived Experiences; Dramatic Participation; Demonstrations; Field Trips; Exhibits; Motion Pictures; Radio – Recordings – Still Pictures; Visual Symbols; and Verbal Symbols. [Insert Figure 1 here.] Dale made minor modifications of the visual in the second edition (1954), changing Dramatic Participation to Dramatized Experiences and adding Television. By the third edition of the textbook, Dale (1969) acknowledged the growing popularity of Jerome Bruner’s (1966) cognitive psychology concepts by overlaying Bruner’s classification system for modes of learning—enactive, iconic, and symbolic—on top of his own categories. This adaptation of his own schema may have been portentous, perhaps giving implied license to others to make other creative adaptations and interpretations, not always to the credit of Dale’s original notion. Application of the construct