Learning Gaps, 2/18

Referencing your learning gaps diagram, what are the challenges you plan to tackle? What types of challenges are they? What initial ideas do you have for approaching them?

After further developing our stakeholder map, we were able to identify the learning gaps in our stakeholder groups by reframing their fears and concerns in the context of broader challenges (current states) and long term goals (preferred states).

As we started identifying points of affinity and points of opposition (left), we began to see how interconnected our three stakeholder groups were. Drawing those connections then helped us to identify more tangible spots for collaboration between stakeholders in our learning gaps diagram (right).

As we were filling in some of the learning gaps for college students, parents, and educators, we determined a few general challenges or problem spaces we are most interested in tackling moving forward:

1. Pressure to acquire (and master) skills quickly in order to not fall behind | How might we shift through “slower” learning and demystify failure? Some ideas we are considering here include reframing and reworking past “failures” as opportunities rather than stopping points. Introducing learners to more nonconventional pathways and “success stories” could also help with this shift.
2. Constant comparison to others (imposter syndrome) and lack of self-validation | How might we shift student’s definition of success and improvement away from others and encourage self-validation instead? Fostering peer-to-peer connections that go beyond external signifiers of success, and balancing those interactions with moments of introspection or reflection is something we would like to explore more.
3. Lack of deeper connection between students and educators | How might we establish more profound, long-lasting student-educator relationships to better accommodate learning styles and goals? Here, we would want to look at ways that educators and students can exchange stories and experiences in order to better understand each other as people and better establish the pace and motivations for learning.

As we were discussing some of these challenges and potential areas for design, we also came across two existing learning experiences that we would like to draw inspiration from as we continue pinpointing our own approach. The first is an online card game called Cards for Humanity- essentially the exact antithesis of Cards Against Humanity- in which players draw pairs of human traits (personality traits, challenges, motivations, etc) and are asked how they would meet that individual’s needs. We feel as if this game is the perfect example of a tool to teach/encourage empathy and foster meaningful interactions with others while doing so. It also presents an interesting approach to gameified learning since it maintains the interactive, engaging qualities of Cards Against Humanity without the competition, meaning the experience truly becomes about learning rather than winning. The second game that has come up a few times during our discussions is one called We’re Not Really Strangers, which is another card game aimed at getting to know someone (or even yourself) by asking questions that become progressively deeper as you move through the three levels- perception, connection, reflection. Similarly to Cards For Humanity, this game employs interaction and conversation rather than competition in order to challenge learners to build stronger and deeper connections with others.

Moving forward, we hope to continue drawing from such experiences that enforce exploration, curiosity, interpersonal connection, and introspection to encourage lifelong learning.