Also called learning by doing. The phrase comes from Reg Revans' L = P + Q formula — learning equals programmed knowledge plus questioning.
Action learning is a learning approach where people develop skill by tackling real, unfamiliar problems together. The premise is simple: people learn fastest when they face a situation that doesn't fit the textbook neatly, and a group of peers willing to ask honest questions makes the learning stick.
The core practice is real problems with peers, not simulated ones alone. The work has stakes — a brief from an actual context, a deliverable, a critique that lands. The format has been applied across industry, healthcare, public sector, and higher education for over eighty years.
Ewance is built on action learning. Every challenge in the catalogue puts a student in front of a real industry problem, with rubric-based feedback and peer review as the questioning layer. The unit of learning isn't a course module — it's the cycle of brief, deliverable, feedback, iteration. The pedagogy is the platform.
The empirical case for learning through real problems, summarised.
Read articleArticleHow a British physicist invented modern action learning while running training for hundreds of thousands of workers.
Read articleThe fastest way to know whether challenge-based learning fits you is to ship one.
