But is it Learning?

In a recent conversation about a highly popular event in our town, someone questioned whether what happened there could be considered learning. This question keeps popping up a lot also in relation to some of the non-traditional formats we’re working with at my organisation. So much so, in fact, that I’ve now submitted a funding application to host a workshop on the question of what learning means today.

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PechaKucha – that’s the event in our town – absolutely counts as learning in my book. PechaKucha is a presentation format focused on image-driven storytelling. You get 20 slides which run automatically, with each slide shown for only 20 seconds. As a listener, you get an introduction to a topic [1]. As a presenter, you learn to identify the key points and get them across to a lay audience. If you properly engage with the ideas behind PechaKucha, you will also learn about storytelling and thus improve your communication – something the event’s organiser rightly emphasises. In other words, PechaKucha offers learning on both sides.

So what, I wondered, may lead someone to question the learning impact here?

Perhaps it’s the shortness of the talks. Naturally, in 6 minutes and 40 seconds you will not learn all there is about a topic. But learning doesn’t have a minimum load requirement.

Especially when we’re talking about reaching audiences who are not well-versed either in learning or in a certain topic, such bite-sized learning moments can be a great first step. It can lead on to deeper and more intense study. But even if it doesn’t: if you’ve learnt something, it’s learning.

Perhaps, too, the whole event seems like too much fun. There are drinks, there is music, and the really good talks touch you emotionally, too. None of that takes away from the learning opportunity, however. On the contrary, this atmosphere is conducive to having discussions about what you’ve just heard. And discussions, according to Diana Laurillard’s six types of learning [2] develop both concepts and practice.

In addition, in my current line of work, many people report negative associations with ‘schools’ [3]. They didn’t like the classroom set-up, or their teacher, or how the learning there made them feel (overwhelmed, a failure). So an informal event character can actually lower barriers to learning for this group. And, I daresay, it’s not going to stop anyone else from learning either.

Perhaps PechaKucha is getting rejected as learning because there is altogether too little structure: limited learning objectives, no lesson plan, no assessment. People have all the power: if they’re not interested, they walk off. Equally, if they are interested, they will invariably use the beer break to follow up with the presenter, and this can take any direction the listener wants.

Particularly in our Third Space work, it is this learner-centred flexibility that seems to raise suspicion. As one participant in our Wachtzeit workshop put it, ‘Visitors need to know this!’ In this view, valid learning emerges as a transmission of knowledge. Visitors (learners) are active only in receiving that knowledge; they neither add to it nor do they get to choose their own path through it. As proponents of understanding as performance [4] argue, however, learning happens when learners make it relevant to their own experience, when they apply what they know and stretch their understanding into new territory, thereby in turn adding to the body of knowledge. A structure is needed as scaffolding for this process to happen. But if structure becomes a cage, it will invariably stifle learning.

What am I taking from this?

We need to have more conversations not about new formats, but about our assumptions about learning. Why do some think ‘visitors need to know this’? Why can learning not be short and happen in a social, fun setting?

Once we’re able to honestly put answers to those questions we can start talking about why other approaches may be worth exploring, and what they may look like. Therefore, it’s exactly those questions we are proposing to explore in our planned workshop. Fingers crossed we get the funding – if we do, I’ll let you know! You’re all invited to attend.

Notes

[1] If the presentation is done well, that is. There are bad presentations, too, but then, there are also lots of traditional teaching sessions that are awful.

[2] Laurillard, D. (2020) An introduction to the six types of learning. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BLxTLbmCtI&t=2s (Accessed: 4 February 2024).

[3] In German, the word is Schule. I work at a Volkshochschule, which isn’t a (primary, secondary, tertiary) school but an adult education centre. Still, people tell us that they’re put off by that element of Schule in our name.

[4] See Perkins, D. (1998) ‘What is understanding?’, in Stone Wiske, M., Teaching for Understanding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 39–57, and Biggs, J. (2012) ‘What the student does: teaching for enhanced learning’, Higher Education Research & Development, 31(1), pp. 39–55.