by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Last week when flying home from Dallas after teaching an Instructional Design class there I was reading a fun little book, Theater Geek by Mickey Rapkin, and was struck by how a statement there completely duplicated a point I was trying to make in class. 

The book is about a summer youth theater camp set up in a defunct Catskills Borscht Belt resort called Stagedoor Manor—in particular it reports on the camp’s history and the influence it now holds in identifying up-and-coming actors destined for Broadway and Hollywood.  

The camp has been running since 1975, and the narrative discusses how much different the experience for the campers is now than in the early days--how the presence of YouTube has made it really difficult for kids to experiment as performers and develop skills.  Knowing that any attempt at performance nowadays will be recorded and published…and instantly critiqued and evaluated…really dampens the risks students are willing to take, exactly at a time and place where none of that should matter. 

Rapkin writes:  “The unique problem facing this generation:  Everything is recorded.  There is no longer a safe space to make mistakes, which is perhaps the most essential step to growth.  Brent Wagner, the head of [the University of] Michigan’s musical theater program, strongly suggests students remove their YouTube clips, because no one should be judged in the training stage. ‘Technology can put a scrutiny on your work that is intimidating,’ he says.”

This is a really important aspect of training: to learn something you need to be free to make mistakes in the process of mastering it.  Group instruction is always limited by the presence of peers and teacher(s) who are there to witness your performance; thus, every time a student has to perform some task in class, the pressure on the student is as much about not looking stupid as it is about mastering the content.  

One of the great potential advantages that e-learning provides, is that learning can be removed from this public sphere and into a place where the learner should find safety and be free—even encouraged—to make mistakes.  But what do most e-learning designers do?  They completely undermine this by making every single interaction a “Test” question with the primary purpose of any feedback is to forcefully convey judgment (“No,” “Incorrect,” “Good Job,” etc.)…where the expectation is that if you don’t get it right you will be measured and found wanting…and that your inadequacy will be immediately reported and recorded for posterity in the company’s LMS.

But all interactions don’t need to be about testing; they don’t even need to be about being right or wrong.  What needs to be done for learning to take place is to create learning experiences.  The interactions should challenge the learner to actively engage in resolving some situation, with appropriate actions available (even actions that will be unproductive) and rich feedback provided including expression of consequences, coaching, and relevant content matter.  Notice that useful feedback doesn’t necessarily have to include judgment.  If a suitable context is provided, and if students understand the challenge, they will rarely have difficulty knowing on their own whether they succeeded or not.  Instead of focusing the feedback on the obvious (“That’s incorrect”), the feedback should convey rich guidance and relevant information that will help and encourage students to try again with an improved approach—or even to try again to intentionally do even worse  — a strategy that can be highly entertaining and equally as useful as a learning event as getting a challenge correct.

The real key to making these kind of immersive, challenging, context-based simulations work is to be very clear upfront with the learner that performance is not being judged (at least at first) and that performance is not going to be recorded.  Only after the learner has had the chance to respond to and succeed at the challenges should you then begin, if necessary, to start evaluating and recording performance in more typical testing scenarios.  Students will thank you for both the opportunity to explore in a safe environment, free from judgment, and also for the fact that you are evaluating their performance only after you have given them a reasonable chance to be prepared for your evaluation.