Thought Vectors & Nuggets: Patch 33

A response to the Thought Vectors and Nuggets Activity
created by Deidre Wilson (@Deidre Wilson)

Number of views: 169

Patch Thirty-Three: Desire Paths and Other Course Design Ideas for Humans

The passage that caught my eye was:

Allowing for “Desire Paths”: I recall once looking at a well beaten stretch of soil between some shrubs in my daughter’s school yard. A friend with a background in landscape and urban planning described it as a “desire line” or “desire path”. It was the trail that the children had instinctively chosen and created over time in spite of the many manicured and carefully placed walkways that had been called for by the yard’s architect.

After #digped, it seems clear to me that, like the young creators of those desire paths, students will always find unanticipated and wonderful ways to enter, exit, and navigate through the learning events and environments that we design, and these alternately carved-out tracks should naturally contribute to our own learning and growth as designers and instructors.

 

I had never heard the term “desire paths” before and thought that it was such an interesting way to describe the phenomenon. Learners sometimes surprise you with what they take away from a lesson, and sometimes it’s not at all the insight or knowledge you had intended they acquire from the lesson you’d planned. These unexpected lessons let me see the course material through new eyes and expand my own learning as well. It invites me to see how the concepts might interact with other pieces of knowledge or experiences my students bring into the classroom. Sometimes it can be quite exciting to see links I had never thought of before and see the doors to additional discussions and understanding open up. It reminded me of the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken”, which I have attached a reading of to here:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZ-vWdLnCc