Great games - but when does the learning start?Home Other articles Other resources Contact John
Great games - but when does the learning start?Many of the activities that you will find in my books, seminars or on my web site make great party games. But the title is Making Learning Fun. Where does the game stop and the learning start?
The game provides an opportunity to gain an experience. But how do we learn from experience? It is not automatic. Perhaps my favorite definition of inexperience is to continue to do the same thing and expect to get different results.
Experience turns into learning when we review it, relate it to some underlying theory, perhaps learnt elsewhere, perhaps developed in the light of our experience and review, then choose either to do it again or to do things differently in future.
Dr. David Kolb described an adult learning cycle which followed the path:Some people are inspired to learn (i.e. do things differently, or change) by an experience of their own or perhaps observing someone else's experience.
Think about the second person ever to eat an oyster:
They may have observed the adventurer that tried the first and reflected: Well that didn't seem to do them any harm, in fact he or she has a rather self-satisfied look, and I detect a dramatic change in their libido. I wonder what it would do for me?
The experience was watching the other party eat the oyster;
The reflective observation related to an absence of harm;
The concept was that there was a connection between the smirk and the act of eating the oyster.
The learning will only be complete if the observer carries on with the active experiment of trying an oyster , too and then deciding whether it was a satisfying experience.
I am told that there are people who have tried oysters and not enjoyed the experience. I have never met them, but because the people who told me about them have never been proven to have lied to me about anything else then I am inclined to believed them.
Do you see the learning cycle in that paragraph?
The experience was that I was told something.
My reflection is that in the past the information they have given me has been accurate.
The conceptual framework is that past behavior is an indicator of future performance.
My active experiment is to choose to believe.
So I have learnt something from information gathered from other people's experience. Which is just as well, because we don't have time to have all of the experiences ourselves.
Another explanation of the eating of the first oyster may well have been that it was two people engaged in a dare. One challenged the other to taste it. The learning commenced with an active experiment. I wonder what would happen if?
Perhaps it started from a report of
someone else having successfully eaten an oyster and living. The second
consumer was inspired by a lecture - an abstract concept. This is the
principle of which multi level marketing is based, as far as I can
determine. Other people have made a fortune selling to their friends and
colleagues, so you can too. I suspect that those who prefer to learn
from active experimentation are those who join the down-line.
Sure, but how does eating oysters or joining a marketing network relate
to using games in training.
Those of you who jump on the learning cycle at the reflective observation level have probably already found the answer. You are reflecting on experiences of your own that parallel the examples that I have given.
Those of you who prefer to learn from abstract concepts are becoming a little impatient - OK so much for the stories, but when do we get the facts?
Those of you who prefer to learn from active experimentation are waiting for a way to try it out for yourselves, while those who prefer concrete experiences are waiting to be told what to do next - or perhaps you have already wandered off and started dong something else already.
OK - TRY THIS, all of you!
Without using a computer, a calculator or a cell phone, add the numbers 1 to 1,000 - and show all of the workings on a single sheet of letter sized paper.
It can be done - in about five lines, in fact.
I have posted the answer on another page, and you can access it at any time you like.
The basis of this problem was once posed by a nineteenth century school teacher to keep the class busy while he went to the contemporary equivalent of the staff room. Before the teacher left the class, one student had solved the problem, in a way beyond the expectations of the tutor. In its original form there was no suggestion that it could be done on a single sheet of paper.
I can never remember the name of the student. He is quite famous in mathematical circles, and gave his name to a theorem, which allows us to find the total of the whole numbers between any two other whole numbers.
If you know the name of the mathematician, please contact me and I will be most appreciative.
But what does this example tell us about learning styles?
If you have been exposed to advanced mathematics and can remember the name of the mathematicians as well as the way of doing the problem then you probably tend to prefer abstract concepts as a learning style.
If you have tried to solve the problem then your preference is probably active experimentation. If you have followed the link to the solution and followed the instructions there, then your preference is probably concrete experience. If you are more interested in this review of the approaches to the problem that the problem or the solution itself, then perhaps reflective observation is your thing.
Your preferred learning style is where you like to start learning.
If you follow through the theory introduced in a lecture and apply them in your life, you show a preference for learning from abstract concepts.
If things become clearer to you through discussion with others, or by reviewing on your own, then you have a preference for reflective observation.
If you prefer the activity part of a structured exercise to get started on the learning cycle, then concrete experience is your thing.
If applying the learning in the real world is what it is all about for you, then you are indicating a preference for abstract concepts.
The point at which the learning becomes interesting is your preferred learning style, but the learning process is not complete until it has passed through the whole cycle.
I have developed a structured activity to examine the differences in learning styles. There is also a survey which one group of seminar participants put together to indicate how they believed that proponents of different learning styles would act in different situations. Follow the tags in this text or at the end of this article to see this material.
A game becomes an experiential learning activity only when there is an opportunity to reflect on it, relate it to some theoretical concepts and apply it. This may not happen in the classroom. The reflection may take place in the bar after class, or on the bus home or when you tell a friend about it.
Similarly a lecture is not a learning experience, unless the information is applied. As one of the great business speakers, Tom Peters, exhorts his audience: Don't write down what I say, write down what you are going to do about it.
If our preferred learning style is catered for in a presentation, the we find it fun. If we take it from that point and apply it, then it is learning.
