Creating the need to learn is the most important skill for Learning Experience Designers. Get this right and success is almost guaranteed to increase learning engagement.
Many years ago, while pursuing my postgraduate degree in Human Resource Development, I took a class in Andragogy—the study of how adults learn, contrasted with Pedagogy, which focuses on children's learning. One key difference highlighted was that adults need to perceive the applicability and relevance of what they're learning before they fully engage, whereas children are generally content to learn whatever their teachers present to them.
Really?
I remember wondering about this at the time. Personally I always struggled to motivate myself to study if I did not see the need for learning something, even in primary school. I despised history in school because I did not see the need. I enjoyed geography because I imagined myself traveling the world. I remember I aced trigonometry because Mr Lombaard showed us how it could be used to calculate the distance to the moon.
I remain skeptical about this proposed characteristic of adult learning. While there might be some differences, I think part of what’s wrong in education and learning design overall is that we underestimate the importance of the motivation to learn.
Recently I conducted a LinkedIn poll to see what others thought. Here are the results:
Surprisingly, 53% of respondents still believed that adults and children will learn whatever they are told to learn (the two “Agree” responses). The reality, however, is different if we look at learning metrics in the workplace and schools. I would argue that learning motivation is the most influential variable in ensuring higher learning take-up and higher learning success (pass rates).
The Buddha is credited with saying, “The teacher appears when the student is ready”
In my career in learning and education, and specifically in instructional design, I noticed that motivated learners do better. My team and I experimented across many projects with “creating the need to learn”. When I founded The African eLearning Academy, this was a core principle that we taught in our Learning Experience Design class.
One project that stood out was one that had a very challenging brief. We were asked by a big global mining company to create an eLearning course on HIV and AIDS awareness. The challenging part here was the target audience…
Managers and knowledge workers.
I’m sure you would agree that most managers and knowledge workers don’t have a high intrinsic need to do an eLearning course on preventing HIV. Most believe that they know it all. Nobody needs to tell them what causes HIV and AIDS. Nobody needs to tell them to practice safe sex or to avoid contaminated needles.
The first challenge we had to overcome was creating the need to learn. Here’s what we did..
We created a course marketing email with a short animation video attached. When playing the animation video, they would see a funny cartoon of a mosquito flying across the screen, a human hand appearing, and the mosquito landing on the hand. In the next scene the mosquito proceeds to inject its needle into the hand. The video pauses on that scene and a question appears:
“If you can contract HIV from an infected needle, can you contract HIV from a mosquito?”
This thought-provoking question was followed by: “To get an answer to this and other things you probably didn't know about HIV and AIDS, take this eLearning course”.
We launched this email on a Friday afternoon after lunch and by the end of the day we already had over 50% completion rate.
There are many more ways to create the need to learn and secure higher take-up, completion and learning success. The key is to think creatively about addressing learning motivators. The most common learning motivators are:
Feedback - Constructive feedback can be a powerful stimulus to evolve and acquire new skills
Pain or Distress - When the lack of skill or knowledge causes pain, we learn very quickly
Hunger or Lack - The desire to feed and care for ourselves and our families is a very powerful motivator to educate ourselves
Desire - When we see something we desire and see a clear link between learning and achieving our desires, we are more likely to apply learning discipline
Curiosity - When something stimulates our curiosity, it’s a powerful foundation for self-directed learning
Admiration - People we admire tend to inspire us to be like the, know what they know, and have the skills they have
Competition - many of us are strongly motivated by competition, by winning something or proving superiority over someone else
Encouragement - Positive encouragement on progress and small achievements is a very strong motivator to keep going despite setbacks and difficulties
There are several more powerful learning motivators, including Responsibility, Social Connection, and Innovation.
When the need to learn is strong enough, students will learn what they want to learn in whatever format the learning is available.
As instructional designers, we tend to indulge in entertaining our target audience with fun exercises, visual candy and superficial gamification techniques. In some extreme cases, I would go as far as stating that we are robbing learners of their intrinsic agency to own responsibility for their learning.
To truly revolutionise the learning experiences you create, start with innovative ways to stimulate both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. When we ignite the spark of curiosity, the flame of desire, and the drive of necessity, we empower learners to reach their full potential. By doing so, we cultivate lifelong learners who are ready to face the challenges of tomorrow.
Willem Maritz
Founder: NoMoreCourses and Studium Alliance
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