If you’ve ever shared a meal with me, you’ll already know that my natural tendency is to take things slow, usually finishing long after everyone has cleared their plates. Ditto for running, reading and writing, which is inconvenient given how much of it I do for work.
In a few circumstances, however, I favour speed. I can mind map a webinar in real time and share the finished product before the last Zoom window has closed; I can whip through a presentation slide deck in whatever time allocation is provided; and I’m pretty good at fastest finger first when it comes to a Kahoot quiz (correct answers not guaranteed).
But when it comes to learning and teaching, who wins? Is the pace-setting hare, catching our attention and keeping us engaged from start to finish? Or is it the patient tortoise, taking its time and trusting the process?
Learning, fast and slow
In a recent Learning Design Meetup we saw multiple perspectives on time and pace in learning, looking at how we might design learning experiences to accommodate diverse time structures, and what impact those might have on learners and teachers.
Two presentations in particular underlined the contrasting effect of moving fast, or slow.
- David Yeats led us first on a leisurely journey of discovery through reflections on an Indigenous secondment experience, emphasising the importance of slowing down within learning experiences.
- Matt Vella later closed the session with an energetic dash through some pacing tricks from the media industry, asking the audience to consider how we could adapt these in learning design.
As you’ll see from the summaries below, both may have their place in our classes and learning spaces.
Dopamine highs and canned laughter: media lessons on pace and attention
Educational Media Producer Matt Vella kicked off by pointing out that the way we consume media is changing. Multiple screens, shorter and shorter videos and different formats compete for the valuable commodity of attention. So can education learn something about time and pace from media and content creators?
Many formats offer ‘dopamine hits’ for the audience: quick-change visuals on talk shows, laughter at regular intervals on sitcoms (even when it’s not funny), and 60-second (or less) videos on TikTok which aim to keep 100% attention until the next video is served up. Some rules say keep it visual, catch the viewer’s attention in the first 5 seconds and address the audience directly whenever possible.
Familiar structures can help with attention, too. Is there something we can learn from formulaic narratives like the hero’s journey or the 3-act structure in Hollywood films? ‘Writing by the minute‘ suggests that there are moments we can come to expect at roughly the same time: the moment of conflict or inciting incident at 10 minutes, a key decision to make at 15-17 minutes, a journey that begins at 30 minutes, and so on. Is anyone else getting ‘lesson plan’ vibes here?
Matt then took us through a series of ‘pacing tricks’ to think about in learning design, including:
- Take your audience on a journey with a beginning, middle, and end
- Create a hook to pull your learners into the topic
- Break up pace with different media
- Implement interactive teaching strategies
- Create a personal story aspect or personal attachment
- Slides: the more the merrier
- Embrace the second screen
- Retention hack: subtitles + images together
Matt explains each of these in detail (as much as he can in 20 seconds per slide) in his Pecha Kucha From a media perspective: 9 tricks for pacing that are a total game changer.
Stitch by stitch: weaving your way to deep listening
David Yeats took a completely different approach in both content and delivery with his presentation on Ngarrindjeri Lakun, taking us through gentle reflections on an Indigenous secondment in South Australia. David slowed the pace right down with a focus on the slow, deliberate and thoughtful activity of weaving, which he described as something that was much more than a skill to be acquired.
Sharing wisdom from his weaving teacher and mentor Aunty Ellen Trevorrow, David highlighted how weaving was a way to come together, listen and talk, something that enabled deep listening through the process.
Stitch by stitch,
Ngarrindjeri Elder Ellen Trevorrow
Circle by circle,
Weaving is like the creation of life.
All things are connected.
In learning to weave, David was learning more than just making things. He was listening, taking guidance, paying attention to the shape of things that he hadn’t noticed before, with the help of others.
This theme felt like a counterpoint to the more functional, ‘instant-results’ narratives we sometimes hear about learning. Learning was not linear in this example, and perhaps not even time-bound at all. As an audience we were drawn into experiencing aspects of this, with lots of time and space for personal reflection in David’s presentation that is usually absent in other learning ‘delivery’ contexts.
David concluded with a reminder that learning doesn’t always happen in the times and spaces we expect, and so learning designers need to widen opportunities for learning beyond the boundaries and limitations of traditional tools. There may be a place to feel overwhelmed, at least for a while, when what we’re learning is complex.
Taking time to reflect
Are you drawn to a slower pace in learning and teaching, but looking to put some pep in your pedagogy? Perhaps there’s something you can adapt from Matt’s pace-setting tricks in your next class. To the speed demons, what can we learn from David’s lessons to slow down a little, and give learners a little more time and space to reflect? Perhaps it’s not a race, after all.