“But that’s the fork I know”
Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
One of my most memorable lessons in how learning happens came from Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts gets a tutorial from Hector Elizondo about silverware for fine dining before she goes out to a restaurant with Richard Gere. When confronted with her meal, Julia Roberts isn’t sure which cutlery to use. “Where’s the salad?” She whispers to Richard Gere. He replies: “The salad comes at the end of the meal.” She responds: “But that’s the fork I know.”
When content creators design lessons for learners, it’s wise to start with what the learners already know. Maybe the “salad” of your content technically comes at the end of the lesson; however, starting with what learners are most familiar with sets them, and your lesson, on the path to success.
Based on what we know about the brain, learning is a higher-order brain function. Basic needs must be met before learning can happen. If a learner is hungry, scared or tired, their ability to learn is decreased. While instructors aren’t responsible for learners’ food and sleep requirements, they can help relieve any fear the learner may experience. By starting with the “salad”, which would be learners’ prior knowledge, instructors help their learners’ brains’ relax and engage with the content, which provides the optimal conditions for learning something new.
So how do you find out what’s the “salad” for your learners? Consider other courses in your program, if applicable. If that isn’t an option, several Brightspace tools can help you discover and then build on learners’ prior knowledge. You could invite your learners to complete a Brightspace survey on their prior knowledge. You could do a quiz with release conditions that unlock remedial content for any learners who might not know essential content already. A discussion board could be a place where learners could share their current knowledge on a subject and possibly even indicate what they’re looking forward to learning next!
We can also look at the same dinner sequence from Pretty Woman and extract another learning principle: if lessons are as complex as a full set of silverware, learners will retain only a few parts of the lesson. This is why blocking and chunking your content and then reinforcing it is so important. Also, just like Julia Roberts who learns-by-doing at a fancy table, it’s more memorable for learners if they can interact with their content by matching or sorting content or exploring it using flipcards, when appropriate.
When you invite your learners to your table (their lesson), start with the salad (prior knowledge), and arm your learners with the correct fork (great content), you’ll be setting your learners up for success in your courses – maybe you can treat yourself to dinner at a fancy restaurant after all your hard work!