You Can’t Fix A Bicycle Into an Airplane-Maybe the design is working, we just need a new one

One thing about learning objectives that bothers me is the whole premise of why they exist. A “course” in education or corporate training is something that the student is to engage with exactly once and pass. Since the optimal state is one try/one pass, it helps a great deal if there are explicit instructions on what to do and what to expect. The design leaves little room for exploration or error that’s not viewed in a negative light. In that design, the learner goes through the course once and absorbs the information. We all have stories though, both personal and anecdotal, of “yeah, I forgot all that stuff as soon as I took the test.” In the corporate world, the best/worst example is compliance training. It’s training that’s mandatory usually to fulfill some legal requirement but always because the org has stated that this content (and one must conclude, the associated good behavior) is so important that all must be forced to take it. And how is it administered? On a ‘take it once and you’re good’ basis — as if ethics, sexual harassment and information assurance training were some sort of vaccines that just needed one shot and maybe an annual booster.

I remember a speech that Bill Gates gave to the National Governor’s Association (https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2005/02/Bill-Gates-2005-National-Education-Summit) where he talked about the failings in American high schools. The problem he said is that they were obsolete. Yes, they had ongoing issues with infrastructure and funding but their obsolescence stemmed from their design. “By obsolete, I mean that our high schools — even when they’re working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year.”

In game design, no game is ever built to have the player play once, win and walk away. Repeated failure, incremental progress, tutorials and even player communities are all part of the design. As a consequence, players build multiple literacies (What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy is always a great read), not only of the content but on the meta language of how to play games. This all makes me think that perhaps learning objectives are perfectly reasonable in the current design and that it’s just the design that I have the real problem with. Maybe we need to rethink how we view “progress” and “learning” and admit that the base genes of most instructional design today is working exactly as designed but that maybe that design was for a different time and a different world. Maybe a new design could also link to a fundamental change in accounting and we could finally look at a P&L and see the employees of a company reflected as an asset instead of a liability.

Thanks to Mohammad Hassam for asking a great question about LOs that sent me down this latest rabbit hole. Also, I couldn’t fit it in exactly, but everyone should read A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster not only because it’s on point here but just because it’s such an excellent book.