WSU Guest Opinion: Learning is a full-contact sport

As a technical corporate consultant and trainer for several years, I observed the unique
classroom dynamic of working professionals. Most were seeking upskilling opportunities for
promotions, higher pay and, in some cases, they were simply drawn to learning a new
technology. I then moved to higher education classroom instruction, where student
motivations were varied and different from those already immersed in the demands of the
workplace.

During both teaching assignments, there was one key common dimension of the classroom
learning experience that always puzzled me: 20 to 40 (hopefully inspired) students would
make the trek to the classroom, then sit quietly, facing forward with three to four student
peers about an arm’s length away for the duration of class.
I instructed prior to the days of online course options and was a faculty member at Weber
State University when it began its transition to online instruction. The wide variety of current

classroom modalities available is still central to the point that learning is fundamentally team-
and community-based. We are certainly able to gather and absorb concepts and facts on

our own through individual study or AI tools, but learning happens when we understand how
our knowledge affects the wider world. That process begins with collaboration in the
classroom.
When I was a first grader, we were often required to take turns reading aloud to the class.
The teacher would select an excerpt from a novel or a textbook and then call on one of us to
recite a paragraph or two. None of us enjoyed this, and it ranked a close second in dreaded
assignments to the malign oral book report. One particular day, clear as yesterday in my
memory, Mrs. Abrams settled on some story about fish and chose me to read a section that
had an inordinate number of occurrences of the word “salmon.” My first-grade brain could
not leap over the silent “l” in that word, so my pronunciations were consistently wrong.
Aside from the fact that I grew up in a New England town where references to any type of
fish are expected to be as impeccable as “cod,” the episode elicited giggles and cynical
chuckles from my classmates. Was I being bullied? No. Was I being teased or mocked? Yes,
possibly, but if you say “salmon” right now with the full “l” sound, it does rate as somewhat
funny. My adrenaline and anxiety-soaked mind raced, but I was also simultaneously forming
useful discoveries and neural connections because of this important social interaction.
Mrs. Abrams let it all play out, keeping the room controlled without calling out any students
for their reactions. At the time, I thought she made me suffer, but now I recognize the
learning that was occurring. We were all experiencing the same thing as a class community,
and I know I learned two things. First, I learned how to correctly pronounce “salmon.”
Second, I learned who my supporters and detractors were in the classroom. This second
lesson helped me formulate a sense of which of my peers were prone to deride a classmate
during an embarrassing moment or, at a minimum, just liked to laugh. The bottom line is I
learned a lot from that brief social interaction, much more than I would have from a
hypothetical simulation or response from a conciliatory AI chatbot.
We must actively think to learn, but beyond applying our minds to solving a problem, we
need to periodically step outside ourselves to recognize the various traps in our thinking that
might impede or derail the problem-solving process. Psychologists call this metacognitive
awareness, and the involvement of our fellow human thinkers dramatically assists in honing
this essential skill.
One of the new traps introduced by AI tools is the progression trap, which is the deception
that we are much further along in our learning and comprehension than we actually are. In

the race to be correct and efficient in our frenzied, time-starved world, we avoid the friction
and struggle required of our brains for learning to take place.
We need a classroom environment in which we can make errors, and we can confront and
defend our choices. Many authors and observers of human interaction have rightly claimed
that “life is messy,” that disarray is inevitable and unexpected. Our classrooms, from K-12
and beyond, should reflect this real-world experience, and not be sanitized and siloed by
artificial interventions or intrusions. True learning begins through and within our daily human
interactions with our family, friends, cohorts and colleagues. Learning will end otherwise.