The Learning Equilibrium

Pune, India, 16 January, 2024:

There is a good chance that two people with similar educational backgrounds, similar mental capacities and similar abilities would differ in their opinion of an object kept in front of them. One reason for the difference would be perspective.

Once, I began a classroom session on Challenges of Collaborative Design by asking participants to create a portrait of me as the trainer. My brief was simple: The portrait could be visual or a piece of code or text - no bar whatsoever. Even today, I often use this approach with diverse groups. That day the session had 18 people including graphic designers, instructional designers, programmers, quality analysts, project managers and admin personnel.

I received 36 portraits of me - all visual. Each portrait was different from the other as far as the physical perspective of the artist was concerned (side profile, front view, back view etc). This is the first aspect of perspective – the physical point of reference is different for every person.

Then there is the version of reality, which was reflected in each participant’s impression of my personality. One teenage trainee had sketched a tyrannical task master while a seasoned graphic designer had illustrated a compassionate listener. A Quality Analyst had drawn a bohemian spirit with special attention to the long flowing hair and colourful attire. In fact, she was the only one who had sketched in colour and one of 4 who had also sketched the background. An instructional designer had sketched an amusing portrait of a bored teacher the sight of which made everybody laugh.

In the reality of every participant, I may have been one or more of these trainers. In my reality, I may have been a bit of all of these characters put together. Thus in a class of 18, I found 36 impressions of myself as a trainer. All these impressions were true and real for they existed in the minds of the learners who were the artists. And for each learner, (at least) these two perspectives affected what they were learning in the session. And all of this learning was totally independent of my instructional plan and intent for the training.

Which is how a workplace functions. Which is how projects are executed. There are many people working collaboratively on the same project but they each have a set of unique factors that affect communication efficiency, which in turn affects quality and timeliness on a project.

So what happened to the original intent of training? Do you think the participants understood the key challenges of collaborative design? Do you think, having understood, they would have changed their own behaviour to reduce challenges on projects?

Hmm?

The photographs are of a statue of a mythical, black, winged horse. The most famous of winged horses in mythology include Uchchaihshravas in Hindu mythology (the seven-headed winged white stallion that emerged from the churning of the ocean) and Pegasus (the winged white horse of Greek mythology) in Western mythology. There are several other winged horses in mythologies across the world. But they are all usually depicted as white. Who created the Black Pegasus? It could have come into popular art culture because many ancient and medieval artworks were cast or sculpted in bronze and bronze casters used a chemical oxidation process to give a black sheen to the finished artworks. Black bronze statues of Pegasus could have led to the evolution of Black Pegasus in modern pop art.

Incidentally, in my memory and reading, Bucephalus (the black stallion of Alexander) is the most famous of black horses, while Black Beauty is one of the most influential literary metaphors ever created. Black Beauty, an extraordinary work of literature by Ann Sewell, addressed several undesirable aspects of 19th century society through a gripping first-person autobiographical narrative from the perspective of a horse.

To my mind, avatars in today’s digital age are equivalents of a visual autobiographical perspective.