The Sandbox Analogy: Embracing Unexpected Learning
Yesterday, my kids were playing in their sandbox. The weekend before, I had noticed that my daughter and her friend had shoveled all of the sand up to the slotted planked “walls” of the sandbox, and a lot of it had fallen out into the playground area. Yesterday, my kids filled that area with water, played on the slide, and got covered in mud. Now, I built that sandbox intending for my kids to sit in it, shovel sand into buckets, and play as if they were at the beach. How they chose to play in the sandbox doesn’t align with my original intention. And that’s completely alright.
An Instructional Designer’s Journey: A Call Center Experience
When I first started exploring instructional design, I was working as a training facilitator at a call center for a popular credit card company. I reached out to an established instructional designer working at the flagship office in Ohio, to learn more about the🆔role. They shared a project addressing one of the most complicated phone call scenarios for credit granting—a situation where identifying the next course of action was particularly challenging, especially for newcomers who wanted to avoid legal missteps.
An E-Learning Solution That Became More
The designer’s solution was a basic e-learning module in a SCORM file. It featured a branching scenario that guided users through the call, complete with cute static cartoon characters. Intended as a classroom learning experience, it evolved into something more. Learners began using it as an interactive job aid during actual calls, asking clients for brief holds while they loaded up the e-learning module and then consulted the e-learning for guidance throughout the call. The instructional designer saw this as a complete success, as the artifact had transformed into a practical, continually used tool. The form of the learning artifact remained the same but the function or usage of the tool had pivoted.
Rethinking Learning Artifact Design and Usage
In learning and development, we often focus on creating artifacts that suit our own learning preferences. This natural and selfish process has been coined “Self-Hugging.” That is making learning content that we ourselves would consume easily. However, it’s crucial to design learning experiences that work for everyone, regardless of their ability or learning preference. The function of a learning artifact should be left up to the learner. Too often, we dictate how learners should use these tools, limiting their potential.
Embracing Learner-Driven Exploration
Just as children might choose to shovel all the sand out of a sandbox—not the intended use, but still valid—learners should be free to explore and use learning artifacts in ways that work best for them. This exploration can lead to valuable realizations. For instance, children might learn why keeping sand in the sandbox is important through their own experiences, rather than being told arbitrary rules. So there is a connection here between the corporate learner and the child playing in the box of sand…
Maybe they want to shovel all of the sand out of the sandbox. That’s not how I as an adult view correct play with the sandbox, but does that matter? Does that mean we can no longer consider what they are doing to be “Play?” They might find themself in a place where all of the sand is no longer in the sandbox and now it’s mixed with the wood chips, and it would be nearly impossible to get only the sand back in. Now they can’t play in the sandbox. At that point, they might realize that shoveling all of the sand out of the sandbox isn’t what they should’ve done; IF they want to play with sand in the sandbox.
The keyword here is “realization.” Simply because they did something wrong does not mean that the learning experience has failed in fact, quite the opposite. The participant will have gotten to a point where now they know why it needs to be done in a certain way because they have learned from their own firsthand experience that there is a rule for a reason. This will be 99% more effective than if you had simply told them, “Hey we do it like this, this is just how we do it because we’ve always done it like this.” In other words, there will be actual behavioral change, and moving forward, the culture will naturally align with the policy in a fortified way.
Embracing Learner-Driven Exploration
When learners have firsthand experience, they understand the reasons behind certain practices. This approach is far more effective than simply dictating rules without context. It leads to actual behavioral change and cultural alignment with policies. By allowing learners to explore, make mistakes, and come to their own unique realizations, we create more impactful and lasting learning experiences.
Improvement Dave 