Make your learners an offer they can't refuse

This article offers three examples of how instructors can make learners an offer they can’t refuse.

As regular readers of this Examiner know, I champion interactive, imaginative teaching and training methods. From the George Lucas Education Foundation Edutopia.org website, I found links to some highly interesting, entertaining, and creative videos reenacting scenes from Shakespeare plays. What makes these videos interesting is the fact they were created by high school students.

I love Shakespeare. But if ever there was a subject difficult to teach to young learners, it’s Shakespeare. The language is antiquated, the learners most often write texting shorthand, and the world of kings and noblemen is long gone.

And yet, these videos vividly demonstrate what is possible when learners are placed in charge of their own learning by imaginative instructors.

One high school student video told the story of MacBeth in rap.

Another told the story of Hamlet in a silent film melodrama.

 A third featured an Othello Godfather spoof (embed not available).

Of course these three examples do not feature Oscar worthy performances. However, what they do feature is students who were given the chance to dive into the material, comprehend it, and then adapt it to their own current lives. The result is a deeper, more meaningful learning experience than what is possible from reading the words from a book.

Unfortunately, this kind of effort takes time. But, as Thomas Paine once wrote, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” These type of student involvement projects, to paraphrase another famous line, “make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

For more information on adapting Shakespeare to multiple media platforms, follow this link to professor Christopher Shamburg’s Remixing Shakespeare project at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer and former Disney training leader, helps trainers, teachers, and speakers keep their learners awake so the learning can take through one-on-one coaching, keynotes and seminars, open enrollment workshops, instructional design consulting, and his published works. He is a member of the GPS Consortium.