Emotional Learning
What makes some learning experiences more memorable, fun and delightful than other?
Truly delightful learning experiences cut across the 3 levels of emotional processing -
1/ Visceral
Learning and engagement go hand in hand. Learning can be engaging if the:
Teacher is amazing
Topic is interesting
Way in which we learn is fun (among others..)
How engaging an experience is makes a big difference in how we perceive it. For most of us, if the process of learning is not engaging enough we are not motivated to learn.
Engagement is the visceral level of emotional learning.
2/ Behavioural
Learning is incomplete without application. A lot of us are frustrated with what we learnt in school because we haven’t found it useful in life. We have not ‘applied’ in anywhere beyond the exams.
Application is the behavioural level of emotional learning.
3/ Reflective
Reflection solidifies learning. How we felt during a learning experience has a big role to play in how we remember it. We can associate an emotion with every learning experience - fear, excitement, play, flow.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)
Feeling is the reflective level of emotional learning.
Delight
In order for a learning experience to truly be delightful it needs to cut across all 3 levels of emotional learning.
Let’s take the example of a math class that was -
Not fun at all but you’re learning something that is useful in life
Visceral ❌ | Behavioural ✔️ | Reflective ✔️Super fun but you learnt something that you haven’t used in life
Visceral ✔️ | Behavioural ❌ | Reflective ✔️Scary and… (does the and matter?)
Visceral ❌ | Behavioural ❓| Reflective ❌Super fun and you learnt something that is useful in life
Visceral ✔️ | Behavioural ✔️ | Reflective ✔️
Which one would you prefer?
This article is inspired from Don Norman’s book Emotional Design