Things we can do differently

A great deal of what I write has to do with thinking about learning – about different kinds of learning and how they work. But if I had to point to one thing about which I am confident it would be this: nobody knows what they are doing. Certainly there are people doing good things; but this is generally a matter of instinct and conviction rather than science. There are many people calling for radical change in the way we learn – Donald Clark and Sir Ken Robinson for example both point to the ineffectiveness and anachronistic nature of learning methods today. Both dream of a world where things will be done very differently.


But whilst I applaud their instincts, I cannot believe we can truly progress without a better understanding of learning itself. I have tried (elsewhere in this blog) to make my own contribution, but would like to summarise a couple of the practical implications – things that we can (and which I intend to) do differently:

1) Build Resources not Courses: there are profound distinctions between the role of courses and that of resources. Resources – be they individuals or media – have always borne the brunt of learning - today to an ever-increasing degree. Courses typically serve an entirely different function, namely proof to an authority that a test has been passed and time invested. True, the two are often intermingled, but this should not obscure a very real distinction. Both may be required, but each has very different requirements: as a rule of thumb resources satisfy a learning need and the format scarcely matters – if that were not true, Google would not be the success that it is.

2) Story, scenario, simulation: as we creep along the spectrum from resource to course it is worth remembering that as the immediate relevance to the learner fades away, the onus is increasingly placed on us to provide it. A flight simulator works well because it feels real. If it is not immediately clear to the learner why this matters then we have to adopt a format that make this abundantly clear. Three formats that work (of increasing complexity): stories, scenarios, simulation. Definitely not powerpoint.

3) Connect peers: there is an important distinction between an expert and someone who merely adopts the role of expert. The traditions of teaching – whether face-to-face or online – have led us to depend heavily on the situational norms surrounding learning. But sitting and listening is not the same as learning – and when you ask people about life’s lessons (as we have done) they rarely identify formal learning experiences. The ‘trusted peer’ or ‘respected expert’  relationships alter the nature of the learning itself, and unless we can provide these, we should question our dependence on forced learning contexts.

4) Work with the affective context: we must abandon the ‘information transfer’ paradigm. Learning never worked in that way, and learning experiences which merely recite the information to the accompaniment of illustrative media do nothing to aid the specific processing capacities of creatures who feel their way though life to a far greater extent than even they themselves are aware. Learning is generally a response to a challenging situation - one which is genuinely challenging rather than superficially challenging. Whilst our understanding of these mechanisms is in its infancy, there is already a great deal we can do.