Take any complex body of knowledge — could be structural engineering, air conditioning repair or Chinese language — and break it down into bite-sized chunks. Now formulate those chunks into problems. Then set 2 students with slightly different technical ability (not equal and not great!) about solving that problem.
Forgo the how-to lecture or examples. Instead, offer a brief introduction to the problem and a pointer towards fundamentals previously assimilated. Structure their activity so that they take turns doing the mental lifting in set intervals. Use the driver / navigator approach which can sustain arousal levels indefinitely.
Time-box the challenge. Design the sprint so that students can get one third of the way to a solution before they hit a wall. Arm them with the tools to leverage off each other’s cortex and to navigate mental impasse. Wave the green flag.
Have shepherds ready to steer the pairs when their wheels start spinning. Hand the confused a whiteboard and ask them to draw a picture. Use Socratic dialog but never ever give away the solution, even partial. Provide advanced content for the ninjas. Invite larger collaboration in the 11th hour.
Now sit back and relax. What happens next is truly amazing.
Needles move. Decision-making becomes more informed, judgements more sound, adaptation more possible. Paired, everyone is more capable across a range of attributes. Patience, self-confidence, emotional control, self-awareness, supportive communication, self-reliance, active listening, self-determination… Growth registers across 2 dozen personality traits.
At the end of the exercise, the pair may or may not reach a full solution but this is beside the point. It is not the destination (solution) or even the journey (way finding) that matters, it’s the dance.
For rendered is something far more valuable than mere knowledge or a solution roadmap. The dance renders increases in several kinds of intelligence.
This dance renders wisdom.
Through repeated failing in the struggle to reach a solution guided by careful mediation of behavior, two main types of learning occur. Social learning occurs largely on the part of the technical senior while critical thinking and technical ability increases most with the junior.
The method results in a robust internal story with many parts of the brain trading off leading roles. Creative and logical faculties engage more fully. Heckling from the reptilian core adds noise to the libretto. Ultimately the resulting cacophony and crash catalyse a reordering — growth.
Flip the roles in the following sprint and you rachet up the capacities of both equally. The technical senior partner (formally the junior) will see soft skills improvement while the former senior partner will be kicking up their technical game. Alternate and repeat until the body of knowledge has been assimilated.
Unlike the traditional classroom where the lowest common denominator controls and the gifted suffer, strategic matching of pairs and alternating roles yield dividends far beyond what a student could accomplish solo in a given time interval.
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The method described above is being used to train life-ready engineers and technicians in immersive ‘bootcamps’ across the world. The approach combines principles from agile software development, problem-based learning, empirical / applied learning, kinaesthetic learning, fail-based learning, peace studies, cognitive psychology and Dewey’s epistomology.
Coupled with generous psycho-social support (individual and group therapy), mindfulness training (talking circles, mediation, koan slams & yoga) and empathy training (role playing & case study discussion), this constructive learning approach is producing good humans with remarkable efficiency. Caring, thoughtful humans that play well with others, connect dots and move with a growth mindset.
The method described above is also able to rapidly remediate gaps and deficiencies where education was interrupted or inhibited by poor curricula. This is the case of Mohammad, a refugee, who was paralyzed by a sniper’s bullet at age 14. Despite no formal education since 6th grade, he completed 18 weeks of intellectually rigorous training to graduate as a software developer.
This powerful education technology is so new that there is yet no word to describe it. ‘Code bootcamp methodology,’ ‘agile or scrum training’ and ‘active learning’ have all been used but none of these terms fully capture the essence of what is described above and happening in immersive career accelerators like RBK.
As such, I propose the phrase ‘eXtreme Learning’ as it shares conceptually several important elements of Andersson and Bendix’s ‘eXtreme Teaching’ including Communication, Feedback, Respect and Courage.
But is this kind of learning better? Depends on what you value. If increased social / emotional intelligence, strong soft skills, creative problem solving ability, autonomous discovery capacity and strong technical acumen are valued outputs, then this kind of learning is better than those systems which leave students deficient in these qualities.
If you add time as a criteria then the outcomes are even more pronounced. Here in the Middle East, I ask everyone I meet if they attended the university. If the answer is yes, I ask one more question: Was it worth it? 8 in 10 remark ‘No.’ Some emphatically as it did not prepare them for employment in their chosen profession. Worse, after years of rejection, they are depressed and angry. Many qualify the ‘no’ with; ‘not only was it NOT worth it, but I wasted the 4 most important years of my professional development.’
Exhibit B: the near universal utterance of RBK students at the end of Phase 1: ‘I learned more in the first 4 weeks of your program then I learned in 4 years at the university.’
So is it better than a 4 year university degree in a developing country? Again, it depends on your goal. If industry best practices, ground-ready technical ability, social intelligence, autonomous learning and strong problem solving ability are priorities, then you will be disappointed in even the top rated universities in the region as they fail to impart ANY of these skills. In fact, a university degree can decrease your chance of employment.
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Currently, eXtreme Learning (XL) is only being used to produce programmers. Yet you can unplug javascript and plug in anything from Prius drive-train repair to Klingon. Given XL’s power to rapidly impart high-value skills, there is a good chance it will displace most traditional skills-based training in the next 10 years.
In fact, RBK is rolling out XL programs to produce highly skilled, market-ready professionals for a variety of peripheral industries including cyber security, AI, machine learning, data science and IoT.
RBK is also in the process of identifying other industries where there is demand for a similar high quality technicians. An XL program will be launched in the fall to produce technicians for the architecture & engineering industry. In addition to having the usual quiver of non-technical skills rendered by XL, graduates will be power users in the solid modelling and production tools design professions rely on to remain competitive — Autocad, Revit, 3D Studio Max, Solidworks, Maya and Photoshop.
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Whether XL is better way to learn or merely a fad remains to be seen. But in the meantime we are poised to roll-out a course in Federation survival practice should the Klingons invade.
