It was the second day of a corporate retreat – a group of highly skilled professionals from across the continent of Africa were doing their final presentations to the group. There was singing, dancing, moving role-plays, wonderful artistic images and much applause and laughter.
Having worked as a learning professional from Abidjan to Port Louis, from Cairo to Cape Town and almost everywhere in between, I have had the enormous privilege of spending my days with the people of this continent in learning spaces.
I only realised how much I missed this kind of energy when engaging in a learning process, when I was once again able to deliver face-to-face sessions early this year, – even if it meant having an earbud rammed up my nose each morning before the session starts.
Sometimes the absence of something for a while truly makes it visible when it returns.
I was left reflecting on the many changes in the learning space since the outbreak of this pandemic & how so much of what is presented as the future of learning has been a part of the African learning experience for generations.
Below are a few aspects that stand out.
- Multi-sensory learning.
As we grapple with what should be self driven learning alone and what should be collective learning, there is a quest for more and more multi-sensory learning experiences. We add video, moving pictures, animation and movement to learning spaces. This has always been a part of African knowledge transfer, combining song, dance and enactment has always been a part of how knowledge has been transferred on our continent.
- Storytelling.
The carrier of content that has consistently outperformed any other when it comes to transferring knowledge, has always been the story -despite our love affair with charts and numbers and spreadsheets, the leader that can hold a narrative and take people along in a story will always have more lasting impact. This is a deep African tradition, and one that should make us leaders in the field of virtual immersive learning.
- Celebration.
I wish I could share the experience of facilitating a business simulation in Lagos or Kigali where the game becomes real, the moments of joy and depression are felt and the noise levels in the room can sometimes drown out all attempts to get the session back under control. We all know that immersive, simulation-based learning exceeds all other forms of learning for its ability to engage and influence gut feel. What we are trying to recreate in virtual spaces – with more or less success – is this sense of immersion & being in the simulation in a compelling and emotional way. Joyless learning loses its appeal very quickly and in a world where distraction is so all pervasive. Designing learning experiences from the perspective of celebration will always result in a more compelling output.
- Community
The big buzzword in the learning space post pandemic has been cohort based learning – and where the concept is understood more deeply – learning in community. As we got cut off from each other physically at the start of the pandemic – the bizarre response from many Learning & Development practitioners was to reach for the solitary virtual cubicles of “self driven elearning”, mostly for cost and convenience reasons. Over time the realisation has set in that without a community, without a sense of belonging learning becomes hard to sustain. This is something that African learning culture has always known – from initiation schools to pilgrimages – from going up the mountain to walking to a holy place – Africa has always understood the value of the cohort.
As we wake up to the coming of age of immersive technologies & in a time when the Metaverse is a buzzword and DAO’s are being examined as models of organisation and learning, we can gain huge benefit by being inspired by the African traditions of learning.
Africa – the youngest continent & also the oldest, the most technologically deprived, but yet most at ease in the domain of mobile technologies is an continent finding its voice in many ways.
It is my humble submission that the designers of the next generation of learning and development products, solutions and platforms would be well advised to spend some time in Africa.
In the creation and curation & choreography of physical and virtual learning spaces – which is what we do at People Power and KnowHouse we are inspired by these rich African learning traditions and it sets the bar high for all our programmes and sessions.
