Learning Science for Instructional Designers by Clark N. Quinn

Author:Clark N. Quinn [Clark N. Quinn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Association for Talent Development
Published: 2021-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5-1. HEXACO Model

Elementary, My Dear Engagement

There’s robust evidence that things that evoke a strong emotional response are remembered better. To that point, in Nick Shackleton-Jones’s book How People Learn, he posits that we remember only the emotional component. While that’s an unlikely extension, it does make the point that we should make people care.

And, to be clear, engagement is a function of the elements we’re talking about. Motivation, lack of anxiety, challenge, and more work together to create an experience that’s compelling.

Engagement is complex. There’s not even agreement about what are the core emotions. Yet, we know that there are positives and negatives. That is, some emotions are unpleasant (though sometimes we might indulge them), and some are pleasant (which we’re more likely to seek).

At core, engagement involves more than the nervous system. Chemicals are emitted in tune with the triggers of our emotional state, and carry the messages. As a consequence, for instance, the long-term effects of negative emotions, such as stress, can actually damage the body.

Donald Norman, in his book Emotional Design, documented some elements of negative and positive emotions as well as the associated impacts on cognition. Not surprisingly, we are more open to explore, more divergent, and more relaxed when the emotional space was positive. Interestingly, we tend to dig deeper when the emotional environment was negative.

This isn’t surprising, because under stress, we’re likely to decrease our ability to marshal many cognitive resources, and will likely work hard in one area. At least initially, then, you want to keep the atmosphere positive. If our long-term goal is to be able to perform in stressful situations, that may end up being part of the experience design, but I’ll suggest that getting the responses down before ramping up the pressure makes sense.

Anxiety

The negative reaction can be seen as a result of a core emotion, anxiety. Here I’m not talking about the general emotional state, but instead a specific dread of an anticipated learning experience. If we think things will go bad, it’s certainly possible for anxiety to interfere with other events up to and including the dreaded one.

Learning certainly can spawn anxiety. If we believe the stakes are high, we might worry that we will not succeed. Our performance isn’t as consistent as we’d like, and our architecture includes making mistakes occasionally. Stress can make that worse. Thus, if there’s too much riding on one outcome, anxiety can interfere.

It turns out, according to research represented by the Yerkes-Dodson law, that a bit of arousal (read: stress or anxiety) increases performance (Figure 5-2). The question, of course, is how much is “a bit.” Depending on your self-esteem, feeling of satisfactory practice, general even-headedness (such as low neuroticism on the OCEAN scale), and so on, you might go past the optimal level very quickly.

Our goal, then, should be to control anxiety and ensure that it’s low enough to support learning. We’ll address this more under culture, but in short we want the consequences of learning to not be too onerous compared with the benefits.

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