Learning By Doing

I'm Wrapping up my time spent at ID's Strategy 08 conference held at Chicago's MCA.  It's been a great couple of days filled with nuggets of inspiration ranging from the topics of designing for the other 90 percent, and changing the culture of corporations through design thinking.  But hands down for me, the most intriguing talk was given by John Seeley Brown also known as "JSB". 

JSB's talk was aimed out how we are learning and being educated and how much change is happening in this area.  His framing of the subject matter was to think about education as an institution which needed to be re-built from the ground up.  In essance, his call was to re-define what an actual instutuiton is—from something which is controlled and overly structured to something that still has shape but is more flexible and pliable.

But for me—John's talk came down to one statement he made.

"We are going back to the one room school house"

I believe JSB was pointing out the irony of what's happening with how we learn.  In the one room school house, the teacher acted as a guide and students learned from each other.  The setting was obviously intimate because it was small and the students all knew each other.  I'm taking a few liberties with his metaphor, but the one room school house is a really interesting way to look at things.  JSB called out that there is a renaissance in "tinkering", a soft skill which in the past has been marginalized, but is being taken seriously as a way people learn.  Some would call this learning by doing.  How do you think I learned what I have about "social media'?

Lastly and possibly most importantly JSB discussed a shift from instruction based learning to "interest-driven participation".  While he did not define this in depth, I believe that it reflects other shifts that are happening in all types of fields.  Connected and empowered individuals are no longer content to sit back and be lectured to. Information has been set free.  Monologues have been replaced by conversations and increasingly we learn by doing—from watching what our peers do, from using what's been made into open source. So the classroom got a lot smaller—and we're back to influencing each other directly.

Some really great discussions happening in the halls.  Wish you were here. :-)

Comments

[olivier blanchard]

Music to my ears! Wish I could be there to hear it.

[Dion Hughes]

Very interesting. I'm forever gaining inspiration from the methods of the school my son attends. "Instruction based" versus "interest based" feels like the heart of Rudolph Steiner's philosophy. but i hadn't drawn this precise connection between the school and my job. thanks.

[Graham Hill]

David

I think that there is growing agreement that much of today's education isn't working. One of the ways it is not working is in how little emphasis is placed on risky creativity thinking rather than safe rote learning.

Tale a look at Sir Ken Robinson's hilariously serious TED talk on the importance of fostering creativity in education.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Sir Ken's point is that education does its level best to remove all vestiges of creativity from children. Even though business and society needs much much more creativity if it is to recreate a better future for the coming generations than the one this generation is in danger of creating.

Watch the video. And think about its message. You know it makes sense.

Graham Hill
Independent Consultant
Interim Manager

[DA]

Graham,

I saw Sir Ken Robinson's talk shortly after it was recorded and agree that he taps into a critical issue of our time. There were some parallels between his and KSB's talks. I'm glad there are voices out there asking questions like this.

[James Sherrett]

To continue your one-room schoolhouse theme, the 4-H motto used to be 'Learn to do by doing.' This still rings true for me.

At some point they revised it to be 'To make the best better,' which sounds ripped directly from Orwell's 1984.

[Chris Bernard]

This sounds like it was a fascinating discussion and I see these trends every day with my peers (such as the original intent behind the creation of this blog for example) and even in the actions of my own children and how they 'learn' versus how they are 'taught'. Rather than say change is coming it's probably important for us to simply acknowledge that it already is occurring, just at massively different paces across the population. This means than like all changes those that adapt most quickly are going to get on a quickly moving bus that others might find difficult to catch. The most exciting things about these changes, I think technology reduces some of the barriers of cost, pedigree and reputation that have been the historical barriers to education in the world. It will be interesting to see if these new trends are enabling or if they wind up disenfranchising people.

-Chris

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