Short post, open thinking.
How long is the queue for a hot beverage in your local coffee shop? Sometimes it may seem as if you’re waiting for the coffee beans to be grown, harvested, shipped and roasted, before you get your hands on a tasty drink. Yet, along with millions of people around the world, you’ll wait in line for your favourite take-away coffee. It wasn’t always this way.
Back in the day of steam railway travel there was a problem that needed resolving. How do you cater for a full train-load of passengers at designated refreshment stops? Table service was out, bar service was in. An urn for tea, a large pot for the coffee. Alas, this quick and reportedly abrupt service offered a less than mediocre experience as this quote wonderfully articulates:
“Railway tea is liquid nausea, whether you get it in the common room or are served with it in the first-class room, out of a silver urn; and railway coffee is… made with a slight suspicion of coffee, just as if a coffee berry had bathed in it early in the day.”
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1865 (cited by Bradley, 2016)
There’s a compromise at play here, the speed of a quick refreshment (albeit less than satisfactory) and a limited choice of options, or patiently waiting for the expertise of trained barista combining, semi-tailored to order, the constituent ingredients to produce something of enjoyment. Although you wait, never forget the barista is always busy.
Is learning the same?
I’m not drawing an analogy here between education and the transactional experience of a coffee shop, and I am most definitely not portraying learning as something that can be ‘served’. Educational experiences require mutual engagement, all involved contributing in thinking and effort. As I watched a very slow, snaking queue of people order and collect their hot drinks, I wondered how this patience became something accustomed in an otherwise frantic and fast-paced world. It’s a conscious decision to slow things down, somewhat forced by the construct of a coffee shop, but nonetheless a decision to go through the process rather than choose alternatives for refreshment.
There is a generally accepted principle that where the pace of learning is slowed down, it allows the learner to pause, select the appropriate path, contemplate what the learning may bring, take time to explore the learning and reflect on what has been learnt. It’s effortful in the sense that there are steps to go through and thinking to be done before the reward of ‘completed’ learning is met. The benefit of slowing learning down is sometimes frustrating, but arguably allows for better outcomes.
Yet, micro-learning happens far more regularly and informally. It encourages bite-sized, immediate wins and in many cases is appropriate. For example, a quick YouTube tutorial on how to use software or a Wikipedia article to provide an overview of a key concept. However, learning a complex topic, requiring depth and layers of conceptual understanding, applying this understanding to a specific context, and making connections with prior learning, requires time and effort. Both have their purpose and their place.
Perhaps there is a third interpretation here, the hot beverage made at home without the expert barista or mass-service tea urn. This is an experience that combines the quick fix and potential for quality, along with a bespoke mug, in a location and situation that is personalised. Depending on your capabilities and tools at hand, you may be able to create a fancy coffee, or you may have to resort to a spoon of instant. The analogy is supposed to be a deliberate parallel with learners’ ability to direct their own learning, the skills and devices to access learning independently.
There are questions here about how a learning experience is designed for fast and slow learning. Some of this is down to the choices of the learning environment and course structure, some is down to the ability of the learner to navigate their way through learning activities, their motivations and understanding. Learning design of formal learning has to complement what learners can achieve independently, so there is a place for the scaffolded and structured experience, as well as the quick wins and self-directed learning. How the design leads towards fast or slow learning at various points may in part be a reflection of the flexibility afforded to the learner, and their skills, to determine their own path and pace. There is however a place for the educator to support in slowing learning as part of a conscious design, in the same way learners need support to realise the benefits of conscious participation.
Short post, open thinking are posts of ill-formed ideas and notes that I’ve not expanded into articles. They are shared here in case they stimulate comment or ideas elsewhere.
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