Passion in Learning: to be more fully human

When I wrote about Emotion and Designing Learning I was examining the idea proposed by Carmen Taran that instructional designers need to have chemistry with their content -- which I interpreted as passion for the content. This post received many comments - and V. Yonkers proposed the idea that people needed curiousity about what they were designing -- but not neccessarily passion. As I continue on my quest to design a game around accounting, I am agreeing with her more and more. Good instructional design requires curiousity, it requires our intellectual and emotional attention, it requires a passion for the design process as Jason W. pointed out, and identifying with a project as Mike B points out.

Still I couldn't let go of the idea of passion. And then I came across an article with this quote:

To be motivated, to have passion, is not merely to be working toward pre-determined goals, but to be swept away by the power of an idea or the drama inherent in all educative, transformative events.
Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong

It made my heart sing! To incite passion in the learning, to remember that education can mean having fun, being in the flow. To be swept away by an idea -- haven't we all had this at some point in our lives?

South of Big Sur, CA, USA (Dec 2006)

Now back down to earth -- in our everyday working lives, in the world of constraints, we can't always have this. But we can aspire to this in our work, everyday. As David Wong continues to say in his article -- "to teach is to inspire." Yes it's a cliche, and it's true. If we as instructional designers cannot try to inspire with what we design, then why do we do the work we do?

Educators, at their best, create experiences in which students can feel more fully alive, more fully human. Perhaps, it is hard to imagine that learning can be so moving. Our darkest, most weary cynicism dismisses this vision of education as idealistic, romanticized, and too difficult to achieve. However, in the end the truth is this: we only wish our learning could be so compelling.
Beyond Control and Rationality

To be more fully human: to make a connection through words, images, sounds to another person's mind. To have them leap with you. "Whether the learner is engaged in reading a story, watching a film, or conducting scientific inquiry, anticipation is what moves us to the edge of our seat so that we may see better and be better prepared for what we might see." This is instructional design should aspire to: to have others anticipate what's coming next and anticipate what they are thinking, feeling and imagining -- and perhaps take them to places they never imagined.

Yes, I'm a dreamer.

Thank you E. David Wong.

For Further Reading:

• Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong (Teachers College Record Volume 109 Number 1, 2007, p. 192-220 http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12740, Date Accessed: 1/27/2009 12:23:26 PM)
• The Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences - reading list by David Wong

Emotion & Designing Learning

In a recent article from the Learning Solutions magazine Paul Clothier interviews Carmen Taran (author of Better Beginnings) who talks about Edge and Emotion: What e-Learning Programs Are Missing. It's an easy read and interesting article. What struck me was the following quote from Carmen:

Too often designers do not have “chemistry” with the content. You have to feel something for what you arrange in pixels. Creating content that has edge and emotion is a bit like falling in love....At least some of the content needs to be part of you.

YES! YES! YES! You have to know & care about what you're trying to help people learn. I am reminded of work we did for a client around selling (back when I had a job, which I just resigned from today, on good terms, resolving a long leave of absence.) During one of the discovery interviews, one of the client's senior people said "you have to have a passion for your client's business, or else how can you excel at your work day after day?"

So yes, when we design learning, we have to have passion for what we are trying get people to understand, or else how do we expect people to learn about it? That means digging into the content, understanding the nuances of how you learn about it.

To play devil's advocate - what about SME's (subject matter experts)? Isn't that their role, to understand and be passionate about the content?

I am reminded of what John Bransford wrote about great teachers -- "effective teachers need pedagogical content knowledge (knowledge about how to teach in particular disciplines) rather than only knowledge of a particular subject matter." Their knowledge of how to teach interacts with their knowledge of the discipline, allowing them to understand what and how their students need to learn in that particular content area. "Expert teachers know the structure of their disciplines." Being an expert teacher in a discipline is not the same as being an expert or SME in that discipline. Yes, you have to know something about what you're teaching about, you have to be knowledgeable about the structure of the discipline, and you have to understand what will help people learn in this subject area.

It's true that corporate learning is not the same as teaching in schools, however, I would argue that the business of our organizations is the discipline. If I'm not passionate about finance and understanding how the world of money works, then what am I doing here? If I am not passionate about adult learning, then why do I write this blog everyday?

Is it possible to create effective learning if you don't care about the content of what you designing?