One Experience Can Become a Learner’s Entire Forecast

My brother almost lost a ₦2.5 million drop in price on a car worth ₦7.5 million because of a problem that could be fixed with ₦185,000.

Yikesss.

“All Albinos are eccentric and problematic,” he said to me.

My brother had just confirmed the “he’s off” statement that his agent had told him earlier that day.

He had to pretend not to hear the man speak to avoid awkward situations.

But guess what?

That man was the only albino he had ever had a problem with, which now became his prior experience with Albinos.

There’s more to the story, but this just goes to show how episodic information can bring about expected scripts for subsequent events and how, when that becomes prior knowledge, it could become either a shortcut or a trap for our learners based on the learning experiences we design for them.

This applies to everything because, as humans, experiences shape how we think and behave around people, places, events, and things, or a sequence of events.

And that’s why it’s easy for a man to say “all women suck” simply because he had the worst experience with one of many.

Or a student to say “this teacher is wicked” simply because he met him/her on a bad day.

Or even for a friend to conclude that his best friend broke the trust between them simply because he’s only heard one side of the story.

One thing the above scenarios all share is:

“A single experience.”

But then, if on the flip side, my brother gets to interact with another albino, that man just gives another woman a chance, that student approaches his teacher without judgement, or that friend simply listens to his best friend’s side of the story, then only maybe, they wouldn’t be trapped in their prior experience.

And so Clark didn’t only bring into the light for me the power of episodic knowledge, but made me see the use of multiple possible real-world experience situations during practice for our learners to get familiar with, identify patterns, and know when to use them.

Hence, giving our learners room to practice and get feedback through different possible scenarios is key to fighting a fixed scenario forecast by our learners due to our practice design choices, which can determine, to a degree, our learners’ expectations of where and when they can use the practiced skill.

Take, for instance, the example I gave with the teaching/coaching example in the article in Episode 50, where I spoke about how we could risk our learners overgeneralising all scenarios from one practice conversation style if that is the only one they experience.

Rather, a better experience would be to give them different practice scenarios to help them see:

What stays the same.
What changes.
And when the principle or ruling applies.

and so it's two takeaways for me
1.Episodic experiences can become prior knowledge that shapes expectations and

2.Varied practice can help prevent learners from overgeneralising from a single experience.

I mapped out a diagram to bring this understanding to life ... thought i should share it with you.

Day 87 of Instructional Design

#InstructionalDesigner#LearningAndDevelopment#LearningExperienceDesign#LearningInPublic#BuildInPublic#SenseMakingNotes#MentalModels#TAWIQM#QuinnSeeds

In case you missed the Quinn Seed articles 👇

Quinn Seed #1- CLICK ME

Quinn Seed #2- CLICK ME

Quinn Seed #3- CLICK ME

Quinn Seed #4- CLICK ME

Quinn Seed #5- CLICK ME