Lego Blocks and Bowflex Directions
The more I learn about Instructional Design and key principles that are vital for effective learning, the more I see them play out in everyday life.
For Prime Day, our family made a couple of purchases:
A Star Wars Lego set for my son (yes, that's a parenting win).
A set of Bowflex adjustable dumbbells with a stand for my office.
The directions for assembling the two could not be more different. The 147-piece Lego set had forty-two clear and succinct steps to assemble the Ahsoka Tano v. Maul duel scene from Clone Wars.
The Bowflex stand, with eighty-two pieces and far greater stakes in building correctly, had a total of three steps for the assembly process. Here they are:
Attach the rubber bumpers.
Assemble the stand.
Attach the straps.
The Segmenting Principle states that steps should be broken down into small, manageable steps and presented one at a time. Lego is a case study in doing this effectively.
Segmenting Principle
Processes should be broken down into smaller, manageable steps and presented one at a time.
Lego provided more detail for the simple task of creating two lightsabers out of four pieces and placing them in the hands of the Ahsoka Tano figure than Bowflex provided for the entire assembly of the dumbbell stand.
Unfortunately, a lot of my learning experiences have felt a lot more like Step 2 of the Bowflex stand. It's doable (and yes, I was able to get the stand built correctly... I think), but it certainly could have been done in a more effective manner.
