#student brain

Thanks to everyone who came to our session, "Guide to the Student Brain" this last week at Momentum! We're so excited to be able to share the work that we do with all of you. 

For those of you who were unable to come to our break-out session, I've condensed it into a brief overview below, and included the slide deck at the end. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me! (Email at the end of the slide deck). 

Guide(lines) to (understanding) the Student Brain

Our presentation focused on understanding who our audience is—the student. What do they like and why do they like it? And most useful for us—how do we use this information? Let’s break this down:

1. Why is it important?

Understanding your student audience will help you make better choices. Simple. When you make a purchase or even decide what to eat for lunch, there are at least a few factors you consider: Have I looked at reviews? Researched costs? When was the last time I ate Chinese? Is it healthy? Sure, there are times when we’re impulsive, but we often end up regretting those decisions. When you’re more informed, you make better decisions, whether it’s how often to call a student, when to give support or how to provide remediation.  

2. Students today are different.

When we look at education today, much of it looks similar to how it did 50 years ago. The difference may be that content is now delivered on an iPad rather than a text book, but the experience of education is much different, simply because the world is different.

Take television for example. 50 years ago, watching TV was a different experience: families gathered together in the living room, turned on their favorite program, and watched—it was a communal event, accompanied by conversation and discourse. Today, TV happens riding on a train, ear phones in, streaming from Netflix on a smartphone. It occurs in between events, rather than being an event itself. The objectives are the same—watching a favorite program and being entertained, but the entire experience has changed. Education is the same—we can’t expect to repeat the same experience when everything around it has evolved.

3. Emojis

Let’s look at emojis.

Glass of wine. Silly smiley face. Pile of poo. We know what they are, but do we really know how our students use them? While we might sprinkle them in our texts, students are using them as a complete form of communication. Emoji speak mimics characteristics of this student generation—shortened attention span, hyper-visual and a need for instant gratification.  I’m not saying we should be teaching with emojis, but understanding the reason behind why they are so sticky will give us information we can use.

Try some of these Emoji fluency tests and see how you stack up.

Can You Match The Emoji With Its True Meaning? - Buzzfeed Are You Fluent in Emoji? - NY Times How Fluently Do You Speak Emoji? - TIME Magazine

4. Reaction or Rejection

The next generation of students, like art, is a reaction or a rejection to the previous genre. Quick art history lesson: Think about classical art, specifically Michelangelo’s David. He’s still, thoughtful, rational—a true renaissance man. Fast-forward 100 years to the Romantic era and you have Barouche art, characterized by everything opposite to Classicism. They wanted nothing to do with the static, straight-lined art that characterized Classical art. In comes Bernini, who also sculpts David, however he is twisted, dynamic and in-movement. When you look at the two side by side, you can begin to understand the influence one had on the other, and the reasons behind it.

The same goes for the millennial generation. Many have called them the Peter Pan generation—for never wanting to grow up, or the “entitled” generation. But have you ever thought why they are like this? The Boomer generation—their parents, raised them with the notion that “they will have a better life” and “more opportunity” than they did. They wanted to provide, to give them everything they didn’t have, and as a result, we have millennials. 

Look at every trend, likes and dislikes or our student audience and ask yourself “What are they reacting to or rejecting?” There’s usually an answer, and figuring it out will get you that much closer to getting inside the student brain.

 5. Reading In Between The Lines

When a student says, “I hate collaboration”, we tend to take that statement and try to find a solution. But what if we’re trying to find a solution to the wrong problem?

The thing to know about kids is that generally, they’ll say they hate or love something. They’re not often “super okay” with things—at least that’s not what they’ll say. They either love or hate Miley Cyrus. They either think a viral video is stupid or awesome. It’s great to know what they like or dislike (or what they say they like or dislike), but most of the time, it takes a little more effort to find out what they’re really thinking.

When a student says “I hate exercise”, they could really be saying, ”I hate running”. These two problems are different and thus, require different solutions. It’s much easier to tackle a more specific problem, so in many cases, we have to read in between the lines. How do we do this?

First, understand what the student generally likes and dislikes. Knowing basic background information like what they like to do in their spare time or what type of music they listen to can tell you more about the problem you’re trying to solve. (i.e. Are they a gamer or an athlete? Do they like country music or EDM?) Next, you’ll want to dig. Ask them questions. Is it really exercise that they hate, or is it just one type of exercise? Finding your real problem statement and building a solution is much more effective for you and your student.

6. Mythbusters

Often, when building courses, we run into tough concept areas. This is content that is either difficult to teach in a virtual environment, or where we know students have struggled in the past. Usually, the solution to these tough areas are reimagined in some common engagement mythbusters:

Themes

Choose Your Own Adventure

Pop Culture References

Video or Interactives

It’s not to say that these never work, but often we lean on these practices as templates to simply insert content without pulling out the sticky. You know—the part that makes them really interesting for students. Here’s an example.

Gamify My FLVS

Earlier in the year, the Reinvention Team decided to develop a prototype around gaming. We surveyed over 4,000 students and found that an overwhelming 98% play games and own a mobile device. We set out to develop a gaming dashboard that incorporated tons of gaming mechanics—points, badges, levels, newsfeed, social integration, a leaderboard, student profiles and trivia. Sounds awesome, right?

Not so much.

We ran a pilot with students and found that many lost interest. They weren’t motivated or intrigued by the gaming elements, but rather felt it was a mask for more work they needed to do. You see, what we did was create a solution for a problem we did not define.

Like our mythbusters, we assume difficult content needs to be put in a video or an interactive, or housed within a theme to make it interesting. The problem we run into with that is what we have dubbed The Basketball Room Effect.

Picture Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He’s going to rebuild a family’s home and talks to Tommy, the 7 year old and it goes something like:

Ty:  Tommy, what do you really like? Tommy: I love basketball! Ty: Okay!

And then Ty proceeds to build Tommy an extreme basketball room, ala:

Awesome, right? Yes…until a week passes and Tommy decides he doesn’t like basketball anymore, as kids do. But now he has this basketball room. When we focus too much on the engagement and forget about what really matters, we get the Basketball Room Effect.

On the flip side, we also find ourselves simply asking students what they want. We’ll survey them. Ask them questions. While this is extremely useful, we can’t forget to read in between the lines. A student will say what sounds best for them, but it may not actually be what is best for them. If you asked a kid what he wanted for dinner, he’d probably say “ice cream!” because ice cream is delicious. But we know that’s probably not the best thing for him, so likewise when you’re teaching or building courses, avoid the Ice Cream For Dinner Effect  as well.

7. Connecting the Dots

So how do we make this work? We found a few examples of other people in other industries using this same approach: understanding their audience, reading in between the lines, defining a problem statement and building a solution around that. Check out these links and see if you can find the sticky:

Redesigning the Bible With Usability In Mind

LACMA Snapchat

To learn about some of the ways we’re using this approach to build prototypes of our own, (or if you are interested in helping us build prototypes), email me at [email protected].