One of my mantras in ‘make it meaningful‘ is that there’re three things to do. And one of those was kind of a toss away, until a comment in a conversation with a colleague brought it home. So here’s a first take at addressing fear in learning.
The mantra, to be clear, is that you have 3 major hurdles to overcome in getting someone to ‘buy in’ to learning:
- I do need this
- I don’t know it already
- and I trust this experience will address that
I’ve focused mostly on the first, to date. The second is for the case where someone’s overconfident in their own abilities. However, the latter one was a toss-away, until…
My colleague mentioned how in trying to train data analysis, you could be coming up against decades of a belief such as ‘I don’t do well at math’. And I saw how you could have anxiety or a lack of confidence that this learning could address it.
Which makes it clear that you need to know the audience, and anticipate barriers. How can you address such a situation? I think you have to make sure that you make it steady and slow enough, or that it’s misperceived. So here, I could see either suggesting “we’ll take it slow enough and make it simple enough that you’ll find it easy” or “you may think data analytics is about math, but that’s the least part of it, it’s really about asking and answering questions”.
The point being, you need that trust, and that means addressing any barriers. It’s addressable, but you need to be aware. I also wonder if the typical elearning experience might have undermined trust such that there would have to be a series of successes to reestablish the trust that a learning unit should have. However, if we start regularly addressing all three, we have a start. That includes establishing the need, removing false conceptions, and addressing fear in learning. Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
Is it fair to say then, that as designers we need to figure in ways that enable folks to trust themselves that they can do it???
Matthew, yes! I’ve characterized it similarly, though I put it another way: 1) we need them to trust that our ministrations will help them acquire this ability, and 2) I want us to develop their confidence that they can do it. I was talking about 1), and you bring up 2), which I also agree with.
Following up on Matthew’s comment, do you see scaffolded and practice exercises or activities with constructive feedback from the facilitator, instructor, or moderator as one way of helping to establish trust? Or perhaps is way just a myth?
Kelly Ann, yes, I think the nature of the exercises – clear relevance, right level of challenge, useful feedback – are likely central to establishing trust. When people feel they’re progressing at a useful rate doing tasks they ‘get’ are valuable to their goals, I reckon they develop a respect for the facilitator of such experiences.