"Educational confidence" for dummies

It is in human nature to be afraid of failure. Making mistakes and small errors is usually okay (and hopefully, we also learn from them!), but when we fail in situations where we are expected to succeed, our confidence often takes a hit, and we just want to forget everything immediately. The truth is that learning is a vast arena for failure. As a father, I know how many times I’ve heard my children say, "I’ll never pass math" or "I’ll never win a tennis match." Some say that expressions like this are due to a lack of interest or motivation, though I believe it primarily comes down to what I call a lack of "educational confidence". We are smart enough to pass the course, but we don’t believe in it ourselves and therefore don’t even want to try.

I often apply the concept of educational confidence when developing courses. What defense mechanisms will my participants use? Will it be "I have more important things I need to prioritize," "I’ll do it later", "don’t need that knowledge", "The course is probably bad", or maybe "That’s just not my thing"? How far will my participants go to avoid taking the course so they won’t have to risk failure? Because that’s the point—when we try, there’s always a risk of failure, but also a chance of success.

When you never dare to try, you never experience the feeling of succeeding at something you didn’t think you could do, a feeling that is unbeatable, like when my son shouted, ‘Dad! I passed third-level math!’ Today, many teachers use various tricks to get course participants to believe in their abilities and strengthen their educational confidence. But when working with digital learning, it can be a bit trickier since much of the emphasis is on the course design.

Here are a few tricks I try to use:

1. Consider the course title. Compare ‘Theoretical String Theory’ with ‘Theoretical String Theory for Dummies’ and note how the latter title immediately reduces participants’ resistance. When the term ‘for dummies’ started being used in the ’90s, many people learned things they didn’t think they could master.

2. Create recognition. For example, if my twin brother managed to do something, I feel that I should be able to do it too. Instead of writing ‘…this is Steve Wozniak’s* favorite programming course,’ it’s better to write ‘…several thousand paddle-playing middle managers have successfully completed this course…’ if paddle-playing middle managers are your target audience.

3. Quickly create a sense of success. Once you’ve gotten the skeptical course participant to start, their first experiences should be fun, beautiful, thoughtful, and welcoming. The goal is for the participant to have learned something new within just a few minutes, thus tasting the sweet victory of success. The heavier, more difficult parts are better placed later, after you’ve boosted the participant’s confidence and they’ve invested time in the course.

4. Make it easy to get help. Ensure that it’s clear where participants should turn if they get stuck, especially if it’s a self-paced online course. Enable discussion forums and try to answer questions as quickly as possible. If the question and answer can be made public so that other participants (who didn’t dare to ask) can also learn, that’s even better!

What tricks do you use to boost your participants’ educational confidence?