top of page

Complex Methods

Complex Learning Methods Include:

​

  1. Experiential Learning: asks learners to experience something first, then reflect to draw conclusions before launching on another round of experiencing.

  2. Project-Based Learning: Rather than teaching relevant material and subsequently having students apply the knowledge to solve problems, the problem is presented first. The problem is what drives the motivation and the learning. PBL is often group-oriented.

  3. Service Learning: In service learning, students learn educational standards through tackling real-life problems in their community.

  4. Gamification: the use of game design and mechanics to enhance non-game contexts by increasing participation, engagement, loyalty and competition. These methods can include points, leaderboards, direct competitions and stickers or badges, and can be found in industries as varied as personal healthcare, retail—and, of course, education.

​​

More about my

personal learning experiences

Teaching Empathy

July 17, 2018

 

 

Many people--especially if English isn’t their first language--have trouble understanding what empathy means.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard empathy defined simply as “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.”  But what if the other person is going through something I’ve never experienced?  What if that person was talking about their home being broken into?  Or if they’re describing something that’s unique in their culture?  Or even something as simple as they’re having a problem with their credit card and I don’t own a credit card?  

​

I’ve heard that when someone really empathizes with you, there is a shift in your energy. You calm down and your anger dissipates, because you feel heard.  

​

I don’t know about you, but that didn’t happen very often for me.  

​

More often, what happens when I talk to someone about a challenging situation I'm having is that I get responses ranging from “It’ll be okay...” to “Have you tried…?”  to “Psh that’s nothing, you should hear about what I had to go through.”  These people probably honestly wanted to empathize and, by replying the way they did, thought that they were putting themselves in my shoes. Someone who replies with “you should hear about I went through,” probably even satisfies the definition of having been in my shoes.    

But what I experienced was that none of those responses really helped me calm down. Sometimes I would even get irritated at the other person because it seemed as if what I was going through was being minimized or dismissed.  

​

So if true empathy results in a shift in the other person’s energy, how are you supposed to do that and how do you recognize it when it happens? 

​

 

That is how I would probably introduce my training if I wanted to use Project-Based Learning (PBL) to teach empathy as defined by NonViolent Communication (NVC).  According to the image below from Project Based Learning (The Online Source for PBL), crafting a driving question is one of the keys to successful PBL.  Driving questions are “provocative, are open ended, go to the heart of a discipline or topic, are challenging, can arise from real world dilemmas that students find interesting, and are consistent with curricular standards and framework.”

Empathy is a key driver of Emotional Intelligence, and is necessary not only in social situations, but in business situations as well.  I think this topic is complicated enough that a combination of Project-Based and Experiential Learning will be effective.  Experiential learning is a continuous process of experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation. A graphic from the Cascades Academy website illustrates it well: 

Using Experiential Learning, I would probably kick off the learning process by having a “before and after” exercise: 

  • Before: Have people experience what it’s like when someone listens to them in a way that isn’t empathetic.  I would ask them to reflect on what they felt and what they thought as they were going through it.

  • After: Then I would ask a volunteer to come up front and have the same conversation with me, and I would respond using NonViolent Communication.  I will then ask them to compare the experience. 

 

Their reflections on the before-after exercise will be the springboard for teaching the elements of NonViolent Communication.  These elements include:

  • What NonViolent Communication (NVC) is

  • The 4-part NVC process

  • Demonstrating empathy using NVC

 

I can also introduce gamification to help make some of the trickier elements of NonViolent Communication easier to grasp.  For example, one of the key thoughts of NVC is that everything we feel, say, and do reflects a need that we’ve either met or are trying to meet.  Another one is that every judgement is a tragic expression of an unmet need.  The word “need” in nonviolent communication is defined as a universal need, something that everyone can identify with (e.g. “need for support,” or “need for consideration,” or “need for clarity”).  It is seen as separate from strategies that might meet the need (e.g. “help with the dishes,” or “ask for my opinion,” or “tell me what you mean”).

​

You’d be surprised at how challenging it can be to name your own feelings and needs at any given point in time (let alone try and decode someone else’s) but being able to do this is critical to giving empathy.  When someone says, “The sales person was being a total jerk,” they’re expressing an unmet need behind that feeling of exasperation.  But being able to figure out that need is sometimes easier said than done.  At the very least, it requires a lot of listening.

So I would probably make that part easier by playing a game each day in class where I show the lyrics of popular songs, and the participants try to figure out what the singer is feeling and needing at that point in time.  I’d start off easy (one of the tips for gamification design is “don’t let them fail in the beginning”) and choose a song that’s pretty easy to empathize with (such as “Let it Go” from the movie Frozen) and then choose increasingly enigmatic songs.  I can also add an element of competition into the game by using points and badges. 

 

In any case, I would probably often refer to James Middleton's Model of Intrinsic Motivation to remind myself to make sure that the activities are interesting, challenging, and with a degree of personal control.

At the end of teaching empathy (as defined by NVC), the final exercise would include going back to the beginning and having participants demonstrate how you're still able to empathize with someone even if you haven't been through the exact same experience, and how that kind of empathy results in a shift of energy because the other person feels truly heard.

References:

 

How do my experiences relate to the learning theories discussed in the course?

bottom of page