At school we have no choice but to have a go at everything that teachers require of us. At some tasks we excel, attract praise and thereby gain confidence. These are the tasks we will look to incorporate into our lives in the long term. Inevitably, there will be other activities at which we do less well and, kids being kids, our predicament will usually attract a great deal of amusement and in some cases derision. Somehow our humiliations seem much more painful than the pleasure we gain from our successes. Most of us will resolve to avoid carrying out these activities (reading in front of the class, drawing, writing essays, speaking Spanish, football, mental arithmetic or whatever it is for you) for the rest of our lives. If we're lucky we'll succeed.
One area of our lives over which we have much less control is the training we receive. Although training works best when the practical activities match the tasks we carry out in the course of our jobs, this principle is rarely applied. After all, how many of us will be expected to engage in role plays, Lego-building tasks, quizzes or group hugs when we come into the office on a working day? When you enter the classroom (or log on to an online course), you are completely at the mercy of the trainer (or the online course designer). You hope you won't be asked to relive the humiliations of your childhood, but you know there's a possibility.
As an adult, one of the worst things that can happen to us is to be humiliated in front of our peers. Training is not the only situation in which this could occur (after all, you might be asked to deliver a speech at a wedding), but it's one of the most likely. Perhaps the greatest responsibility of any designer of learning experiences is to reduce this threat. Let's look at some typical situations:
- Participating in role plays: Most learners hate them, but they are sometimes the only realistic way of allowing for skills practice. Of course, you could use an online simulation, in which no-one gets to laugh at your mistakes, but these can be expensive to produce and may not always provide the necessary realism. If role plays are unavoidable, the risks can be reduced by allowing for repetitive, short practices in twos or threes, rather than one major, do-or-die exercise in front of the whole class.
- Posting to forums: It's surprising how anxious people can be about something which many of us regard as quite trivial, but remember that not all of us find it easy to articulate our thoughts in writing - this might even be one of the activities we are most trying to avoid. Posting will be easier to contemplate when the only viewers are other members of the learning group and when the expectations for the number of words, punctuation, spelling and grammar have been clearly communicated (hopefully as liberally as possible).
- Speaking with a mic in a virtual classroom: You might think that this would be no problem at all - after all, we have to talk every day. However, you are very much the focus of attention when you take the mic in a virtual classroom and for many this will have the feel of a presentation. The problem is exacerbated when the student is being asked to speak in a second language. Luckily, virtual classrooms do provide alternatives, including the text chat.
It is incumbent on the facilitator to create as safe an environment as possible for learners. Feedback should be honest, yet always constructive and never personal. It should be made quite clear which activities are for experimentation only (so mistakes are not only accepted but welcomed) and which are for assessment.
I'm not suggesting we take this too far, otherwise we get to the ridiculous situation that we reached in some schools, when all competitive sports were banned. Competition is an integral element in our lives and can motivate us to higher levels of performance. On the other hand, no-one learned anything when so stressed they feel like being sick.
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