🗣️Transcript
Hello there! I’m back with another lesson. This one’s called: The Two Modes That Move Folks Forward. And we’re going to dig a little deeper into what it really takes to get results.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Knowledge-led vs action-led course design
- The two working modes that drive results
- The interconnectedness of learning and doing
So let’s get into it.
There’s a common attitude to course-building that assumes all you need to do to help students reach their result is work out what topics you should teach.
And that’s a kind of a knowledge-led approach.
But I’ve found when designing your course it’s better to lead with what you want students to do, rather than with what you want them to learn.
In other words, an action-led approach.
Because ultimately, it’s students taking action that creates progress.
Learning has its place too of course, but I’ve found that leading with the “doing” part keeps you firmly focused on the result and stops you teaching people stuff they don’t really need.
So let’s explore this with a simple example.
There’s a corporate team-building game where two people sit back to back. One has a picture of a simple object and the other has a pen and paper.
And the basic idea is that the person with the picture has to give their partner verbal instructions to reproduce it without telling them what it is.
So if you and I were playing and I had a simple picture of a flower, I might give you the following instructions. (Try to imagine following these instructions in your head.)
First I say:
“Pick up the pen and draw a circle in the middle of the top half of the paper, about one inch in diameter.”
So you draw a circle.
Then I say:
“Now draw two parallel lines, close together, from the bottom of the circle, that go all the way to the bottom edge of the page.”
So you draw two lines.
Then I say:
“Next, you’ll draw several copies of one shape but I need to describe it first. It’s a curve with an opposite curve below that looks like a pair of lips.”
And you imagine what I’ve described in your mind.
Then I say:
“Okay, draw roughly 10 of those ‘lip’ shapes around the edge of the circle, fanning out from the centre, and make them about an inch long.”
And you draw those 10 shapes.
Finally I say:
“Draw two bigger versions of those shapes, on either side of the two long lines, one pointing up and left and the other pointing up and right.”
And you draw those last two shapes. And hopefully by the end you would have drawn a vaguely recognisable flower.
Now, this is an extreme version of the action-first approach to getting results where there’s not any learning, it’s just pure doing.
So now imagine I’m playing the same game with a friendly alien who understands rudimentary English but is missing lots of basic concepts. So when I say “pick up the pen” the alien says: “What is a pen?”
So I have to pause and explain what a pen looks like and what it does. Along the way I’ll also need to explain other concepts like “paper” and “draw” and “circle” but eventually the alien will understand enough to draw that flower.
The point is that when someone – even an alien! – is working towards a result, they’re usually switching between two distinct “modes” – doing and learning.
So your job as an action-oriented course designer is twofold. Teaching people what they need to do to get the result AND what they need to learn to do it successfully.
Ready to go a little deeper? Because this is where things get a bit more interesting.
So we’re going to talk about the interconnectedness of doing and learning, which I know sounds like the title of an existential novel, but let’s put that to one side for the moment.
As we’ve just seen, sometimes in order to do something successfully, you first need to learn something. Like in the scenario with the alien: before the alien could pick up the pen and draw with it, they needed to learn what a pen looks like and what it does.
And it’s the same with designing your course. For instance, if you want your students to write an awesome About Me page for their website, you’d better teach them what makes a great About Page, or they might struggle.
Or if you want your students to have more successful sales conversations with their prospects so they can win more business, you’ll need to teach them how an effective sales call is usually structured.
The point is that the learning makes the doing possible.
But interestingly, sometimes it works the other way around.
In order to fully learn something, you need to do something.
For instance, if you want students to, say, learn the art of writing blog headlines, you could get them to write 100 headlines as practice.
Or if you want them to learn to be comfortable on camera, you could get them to make 10 short practice videos and get feedback from trusted friends.
In each case, the doing makes the learning possible.
Okay, that’s it for this lesson. To briefly summarise: when students are working towards a result they’re switching between two basic modes: doing and learning.
Quote often, to do something, you need to learn something first. And sometimes, to fully learn something, you need to do something, like practise a skill.
Knowing this will help you break down the work you want students to complete inside your course. Which is what the next lesson starts to tackle. See you there!