“Put the phone down now! You are
way past your screen time,” I say angrily to my 6-going-on-13 year old while he
selectively listens (or rather, doesn’t listen) to me, eyes glued to the device
that has singlehandedly ruined parenting for all recovering mothers and fathers
like me. Frustrated, I call the source gene responsible for this stubborn
behavior in my kid and this situation – his dad, my husband. “But he’s on an
educational app. He’s learning,” the hubby says reassuringly. “So? It’s still a
screen!” I retort almost surrendering to this one-and-a half-men pair that has
made it its mission to drive me up the wall every single day.
The number of educational apps on
AppStore and Playstore is mindboggling in itself. On the PlayStore, in
particular, the
biggest category in terms of app volume is education.
Jumping on this bandwagon is TikTok,
a Chinese-origin social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync,
comedy, and talent videos, which has now entered
the eLearning market with its EduTok program in India. This program will
offer life tips, career advice and motivational speech videos in partnership
with educational companies like Vedantu, Vidya Guru, Hello English, CETKing, Toppr,
Made Easy, and GradeUp.
I cringe as I digest this
information. “One more app to fight about,” I murmur to myself.
My kid, who’s a smooth operator
(not sure who’s genes he’s benefitting from!) has, in the meanwhile, moved on
to his Reader book. “See, this is what I mean by learning,” I tell my husband
proudly. “By focusing on courses alone, you mean?” he asks in disbelief and
continues his monologue in the same breath. “It’s
time to banish courses and rethink learning and development. Professionals need
to be weaned off their addiction to courses and start aligning learning with
business outcomes.” This has been a recurring theme at the World of Learning Conference
2019, held at Birmigham’s NEC in mid-October, and now listening to my husband
it feels like hosting Andy Lancaster in our living room! Andy is the Head of Learning
at the CIPD who believes that L&D’s focus on courses and measuring how many
people took the training makes it difficult to understand how training is
impacting business goals. He suggests using business metrics and aligning
learning metrics to business outcomes.
“You can’t just apply adult
education models to K-12,” I say firmly. “It doesn’t go both ways perhaps, but
some K-12 principles sure apply to adult learning,” confirms hubby and adds, “Like
the Goldilocks zone, where learning progresses
most quickly when learning something new. This is based on a research on how
newborn babies avoid spending time on things that are either “too simple” or
“too complex”. Long before they can understand the story of Goldilocks, babies
appear to have mastered the heroine’s art of decision-making.”
Just as I am about to launch myself
into a heated debate of how I almost always choose, oftentimes forced by the
circumstances, the most complex thing (like dealing with two men who are not
just a spitting image but exhibit the exact same behavior when I can’t even stand
one!), we are rudely interrupted by a little bobbling head in front of us.
“It’s my English spell-bee exam tomorrow. And I don’t want to fail,” my kid
exclaims, concern written all over his face. “Awww! You won’t fail, baby,” I console,
lifting 17 kgs of cuteness onto my lap. “I’d say, you rather fail,” chimes in
the dad. I dart an angry look at the man who I expect to have at least some
degree of empathy. “What?” he says AND gestures as if to validate his advice. “Don’t
you know,
failing 15% of the time is the best way to learn,”
adds my husband with the pride of a man who has personally conducted the study.
As much as I would like to engage in a mental karate, it’s true. To make sure
you are learning at the optimal rate, new research finds that you should be
aiming to fail 15.87 percent of the time, to be exact. These findings could
have implications for training courses, teaching in classrooms, and everywhere
that learning happens.
“All right, all right. I will code
an educational app myself that’s not so much of a course yet facilitates
learning, hits the sweet spot between too-easy-and-too-simple and allows for
failure. Happy now?” I say rhetorically in an effort to end the discussion and
proceed to an important ritual that involves sitting around the dining table
without any screens for distraction and do what was an expected way of
socializing – with your own family –
not so long ago. “That’d be amazing! Go for it,” encourages the husband as he
begins a private discourse just for me. “Put your Engineering degree to a solid
use. You know, there was a sharp rise in enrollment of women coders for the
fifth edition of Tech-Gig’s Geek Goddess this year. Finally, Technology
industry is seeing improved gender diversity….,” he rambles on.
I roll my eyes and march towards
the dining area, kid and husband in tow, ready to substitute food with a good
serving of learning this evening. Bon appetite!
‘The
month that was’ is a monthly column covering the hot and the happening in the
eLearning, L&D and learning technology space presented in a light,
easy-to-digest format. While the aim of these posts is to keep the HR and the
Learning & Development fraternity abreast with the latest news and views,
it is a vent out for the author, Pranjalee Lahri, who deals with a
one-and-a-half men pair – her hubby and her 6-year old son – as she moonlights
as a wife and a mother.
Pranjalee Lahri
