Does your Learning Experience Spark Joy?
What can have the most profound impact on your learning experience?
Happiness.
Now you might be slightly confused here.
What does happiness have to do with learning? Um, everything!
Our feelings are our feedback mechanisms. We don’t fully understand them but we know they mean well. We know that fear means it’s something to run away from and happiness is something to run towards.
And our learning experiences?
Well, they’re not designed to optimise for a learner’s happiness.
Here are 3 tools to get your learning experiences to spark more joy:
1/ Choice
By putting your learner’s in the driver’s seat - you’re giving them more ownership of their own learning. More ownership means they feel more empowered to change things they don’t like and do more of what they like.
Choices can be big or small and they don’t mean a blue sky necessarily. Here is what choice can look like:
Learners to choose the type of output they produce. E.g. For the same brief - the project could be a podcast, a video or a presentation
Learners to choose the order in which they study something. Where the order doesn’t matter - let them choose what they do when
Learners choose the name of their group, the frequency, time and duration when they meet.
2/ Celebration
Learning fundamentally is hard. And because of that, celebration is one of the most underrated things in learning experiences. Celebrations not only means feeling heard and seen but it also builds a collective identity.
Here is what celebration can look like in learning experiences:
Building a weekly ritual around the last session in a week by celebrating learners that did well. Use this time to incentivise positive behaviours in your context - whatever they may look like!
Create spaces for shoutouts, gratitude for the group to share - sync or async. Incentivise people to recognise and acknowledge behaviours and people that meant something to them
Celebrate milestones achieved as a group and highlight fun and silly moments. Acknowledge how far you’ve come!
3/ Conversation
Learning is a two-way street. If our learning experiences don’t allow for learners to express themselves, we’re doing something wrong. Creating space for conversations in learning experiences needs to be a deliberate and means letting go of control as designers & facilitators.
Here is what conversations can look like in learning experiences:
Hold the space for your learners to express how they’re feeling. Encourage your learners to bring their whole selves while they are learning - the good and the bad.
Create smaller groups of learners and enable them to connect with each other - to learn together, gather diverse perspectives or to hold each other accountable!
Be vulnerable and encourage vulnerability. As facilitators and designers we drive culture by our own actions.
So the next time you’re thinking about learning experiences, don’t forget the 3Cs that spark joy - Choice, Celebration & Conversation!