Read All Instructions Before Proceeding

I taught a Study Skills class, and we had an activity that went something like this:

1. Read all directions before starting.
2. Write your first name down.
3. Take the third letter of your name.
4. Turn it into a number (a=1, b=2, c=3, etc.)
5. Multiply that number by the number of letters in your name.
6. Subtract the day of the month from that number.
7. Square the number.
8. Disregard instructions 2–7.

Maybe one or two students per class would read all the instructions, see that they could ignore most of them, and they’d look up and smile. The majority would jump right into the convoluted activity, but once it started getting weird, they’d read through the rest of the instructions and realize they didn’t need to do it anymore. A few unfortunate kids would just keep working and working until I gave them a hint to look at the rest of the instructions.

The point of the activity for the students is to read instructions carefully, but I want to flip it around. What does the activity mean for the teacher? Think of all the time most of the students wasted because they didn’t understand the instructions. The gut reaction from most teachers would be, “That’s their own fault, they should have read the instructions more carefully.” The problem is, they’re not teaching classes about reading instructions (except in my Study Skills class), they’re teaching classes about biology, algebra, history, and so forth. When students waste time on misunderstanding instructions, they have less time to learn the content.

To me, it’s a bit deeper than just making sure instructions are easily understood. Learning is inherently fun, but our entire school infrastructure tends to bog students down with instructions and directions and procedures and rules. Like my Study Skills students, they spend so much time just trying to figure out the system, there’s barely any time for learning. This, of course, leads to several other thoughts:

• In software this is called user experience (UX), but in education I call it learning experience (LX).
• To me, there are two kinds of UX, and therefore LX: seamless, and delightful. Seamless must be the first priority.
• Gamification, even when done well, is the delightful kind of LX. When it’s not seamless as well, gamification just makes things worse.
• Vygotsky would call on the zone of proximal development (ZPD), where something is just difficult enough to keep you engaged without getting bored nor frustrated.
• Elsewhere I’ve heard it called Flow, where you’re enjoying what you’re doing so much that you essentially lose track of time and often forget to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom.
• It’s more than just ‘getting out of the way.’ It’s about preparing the way.
• I think it’s quite possible that a post-LMS learning platform will enable really great LX design in schools, just as programming languages have matured to the point that UX design is so prevalent in modern software.
• I believe the invisible hand of competition will both encourage a software company to create such a learning platform, and teachers across the country to embrace the new learning model.

Since leaving education, it’s been a hobby of mine to daydream up what this new learning platform and model would look like. If it’s your hobby as well, contact me.

Originally published at RCLX.