Using Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Student Performance

I recently watched a great YouTube video called Using Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning by Dr. Robert Bjork. It sparked so many ideas for me and really exemplified some of the facets I am trying to accomplish with my work in gamification and online learning. Let me share some of these ideas with you in today's blog post!

Dr. Robert Bjork is  a renowned cognitive psychologist who has dedicated his career to studying how people learn. In this video, he discusses the concept of "desirable difficulties" and how they can actually enhance our ability to learn and retain information.

He breaks down the concept into their roots: 

• Desirable- enhance long term knowledge retention and transfer of knowledge
• Difficulties- pose challenges for the learner because of they way they must be structured (spacing, variability, interleaving concepts, intermittent feedback)

The part that I really loved and stuck out to me is when he described the different levels of difficulty. Basically, he stated that the difficulty is desirable for a person because they have the tools (foundational knowledge) to be able to overcome the challenge. This is true with any game we play. We go from one level to another, gradually increasing in our ability to overcome more difficult challenges. 

However, what happens when a student does not bring the foundational knowledge needed to overcome a challenge? It is no longer desirable for them. This is where I believe gamification can come in and save the day! Just like a game of Candy Crush, we can build online learning modules that build on difficulty for students and they can move through at their own pace. So what amazing CandyCrucsh-like Module will you develop for your online course next? Share your thoughts, experiences and ideas in the The Online Nurse Educator Facebook group!