Pedagogy for “good students”, too present in digital training!

The pedagogy of good students dominates e-learning

In distance learning, the training remains (again!) too passive. How many off-the-shelf courses are a succession of videos, where the only interactivity comes down to a few quizzes from time to time? Even when promising technologies such as virtual reality are used, we end up with the “immersive” version of a simple educational film.

If we are well aware of the problem of passive formats on memorization (we discuss it in fact in the article”3 essential keys to go from memorization to application“), we know less about the fact that they specifically exclude learners who are less comfortable with the training. You could say to yourself that they just have to click on Play and let themselves be guided... except that the reality is very different!‍

Beware of cognitive overload

Faced with a passive format, The learner must himself manage his motivation, the quantity of effort he deploys, monitor his own progress, choose the next stage of his learning, adjust the pace at which he is progressing... even complete his training with spontaneous revisions (“Well, what were the 4 steps of the SPRI method?”). This complex process requires attention and memory, cognitive resources that are available in limited quantities (we talk about them in the article”Mental overload, the enemy of learning“). The resources taken to manage this learning process will not be spent on learning the training.

However, a novice needs more attention than a more advanced learner to process the same information. Remember how you learned to drive : at the start, each event on the road took all your attention (managing the pedals, the sign, the car behind...) then little by little, you progressed and you needed less attention to process these same events. When you are a novice, it is therefore difficult to learn and manage the learning process at the same time. Only “good students” are able to carry out these two activities simultaneously.

The passive content trap

In addition, studies show that our relationship to learning is generally biased. Learning moments are too often seen as an opportunity to “prove” one's skills. Instead of focusing on their own progress, learners then set themselves the goal of “being the best” or “not looking like a loser.” In these cases, they will spontaneously choose passive content, perceived as less threatening: no need to mobilize their knowledge and take the risk of making a mistake.

This effect affects all learners, regardless of their level, but it is reinforced in people who are further away from the training. Having failed several times in a learning situation, they will tend to protect themselves. They will then rush to passive content and avoid the most effective formats such as scenarios, or else only partially engage in it (“no but if I was wrong, it's because I wasn't up to it!”)

“Customizing” doesn't entirely solve the problem

Spontaneously, the proposed solution to this problem is theAdaptive learning. It is hoped that adding algorithms that adapt the learning experience will allow everyone to benefit from the parts of the training that are most relevant to them. However, there are two limits to this:

In most cases, adaptive learning simply changes the order in which your training is presented or certain superficial parameters. However, offering to watch one video first rather than another does not fundamentally change the learning experience: your learners will still have a lot to do to manage their efforts and strategies.

Adaptive learning needs data to work, and data in “passive” formats (reading time, clicks) carry little information about the real level of the learner. The adaptation will therefore be modest, compared to the data that can be collected via more active formats, where the learner chooses answers, written directly into the interface.

The problem arises at the outset, right from the design stage: what is the training focused on? What strategic choices are made to better guide the learner?

Fundamentally rethink its pedagogy from the design stage to make its training accessible to all

A first step is of course to adopt more systematically more “active” educational formats. Bad news: it won't be enough to make your training accessible to everyone.

The most effective lever is to reinforce the guidance of learners in training. Divide your courses finely into short modules, with legible titles, thanks to which your learners will be able to find their way around easily. In this framework, it is easy to propose actions focused on a very specific skill, where learners are guided at each stage.

Example:

😕 Only simulate customer meetings where all aspects are worked on at the same time (management of objections, presentation of the arguments, negotiation...) -> big cognitive load for beginners who do not yet have the right reading grid.

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😊 Multiply micro exchanges, where each aspect is first worked on in isolation and the solutions have been presented beforehand by the trainer -> can focus their attention on the specific properties of each phase (points of vigilance, good reflex)

A second lever is To admit mistakes and to integrate them directly into the training design. Do you notice that in the field learners have such bad practices? Integrate it into your scenarios! From this, it is possible to make Feedback specific, which unravel learners' prejudices and beliefs while maintaining their sense of competence: “I know why I made a mistake”.

Example:

😕 Do a simple knowledge check quiz: the feedback will be general and will only indicate the correct answer

😊 Make a roleplay quiz, where each proposed answer corresponds to a mistake made by the novices and provides precise feedback to those who choose it

If you want to offer training that benefits everyone, Didas design solutionk was designed specifically to precisely identify the mistakes made by your learners and stage them in micro practical cases.

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