A Unified Learning Theory

I recently read (can’t remember where) that any true lover of a subject is a sceptic. It’s a quote that I remember because it suggests that I have a love of learning rather than a bitter cynicism developed over decades of working in the field. Along these lines I was reading Donald Clark’s Plan B blog over the weekend. In a recent post he – yet again – trashes the notion of ‘Learning Styles’ and – yet again – savours the stinging retorts from those who make a living peddling this stuff. It actually can be quite fun stirring up the traditional learning community in this way – and Donald is fortunate, I suppose, that learning fundamentalists aren’t quite as reactive as say, religious fundamentalists (although the NLP crew seem well on the way. Only kidding!).

I’ve lost count of all the crap that regularly resurfaces in the septic tank that is learning theory: Kolb’s learning cycle, learning styles, NLP, learning by doing, Kirkpatrick… about 15 years ago I was fond of Bruner and his ‘Modes of Representation’. Accordingly, we ‘pioneered’ work on the ‘see-hear-do’ model – the idea being that if we presented information in these three ways we were not only broadening the appeal to various learning styles but over-encoding and greatly increasing the chance of recall. I spoke about it at conferences, I think. But it wasn’t enough – I wanted research to back it up – and so, in a story I have told many times, we developed the same content in five different formats of varying richness to determine just how much better our multimedia learning actually was. And – lo – people learned most from the text-only version; proving that learning is a bit like eating: you might enjoy a Super-size McBurger meal, but most of it passes through your system and your body can get all the nutrients it needs from much simpler fare. It’s all about the context.

But this is not the point I wanted to make: what really strikes me is how desperately we learning professionals crave a unified theory – something of Keynesian proportions that we can use to guide what we do and justify our existence. In reality, though, there is no theory of learning that will serve and all we have are a series of traditions – such as standing talking to people who are sitting listening – which we can’t really justify satisfactorily.

Of course there is plenty of research into learning, and some well supported general models – such as classical and operant conditioning. But these are not theories that work well in an everyday environment (take a look at Skinner’s ‘learning machine’ if you doubt this). There is also a great many solid pieces of research of interest (the mirror neurons research is especially interesting, I think) but which we struggle to keep up with, and which to date have failed to amount to an overall paradigm.

Games are interesting – I digress slightly, but the most fascinating and addictive games, such as World of Warcraft, work because they do follow simple (operant) conditioning models. You get rewarded for every little thing that you do. Gradually your experience points will add up and you will advance a level. As you advance levels you have access to new abilities and – more importantly ostentatious gear. Imagine if such a model were truly applied to our profession: for each course completion (or good test score) I would earn experience points – and perhaps for my blogs and tweets too. I might never be a level 80 learning professional, but I am guessing that by now I have levelled enough to drive a 5-series BMW and wear the Rolex that only level 40+ learning professionals get to wear. Could we really be that petty? Just sit on my train in the morning and look at the rings, bags, watches and suits….

But back to business: what we need is a theory of learning on which to base things such as instructional design models and evaluation principles. That is not to say there aren’t plenty of useful resources – over the years I have learned most of the really good stuff from colleagues such as Laura, Clive, Donald, Charles who have developed a keen sense for what works and what doesn’t. And there are also some great commonsense books – such as Michael Allen’s.Guide to E-learning. But these fall short of a grand theory.

For those of us who have lost faith in all the learning mumbo-jumbo, I think it is not enough merely to scoff at those who are still peddling it – I think we need to try and come up with something original, something that we are happy to defend. Yes, I appreciate that in all likelihood this will only result in a net contribution to the mumbo-jumbo pool – and that in the absence of sound research we are probably just building castles in the sky: but I, for one, long for more creative discussions about learning, discussions which seem to make sense of our collective experience of working in this field – after all, real science often starts with theories derived from anecdotal observations.

To this end, I have started developing my own ideas around how learning works and, together with Shane from my team and an external agency, have been doing some research within the BBC on our peculiar group of learners. Some time in the next few weeks we will complete the set of learning design tools that we have been working on for the last six months – and I hope to share this with anyone who is interested. If only so they can tell me what a load of rubbish it is.