Are You Thinking About Learner Anxiety?

Looking through my old (1987) “Instructional Technology: Foundations” book I came across an interesting paragraph about anxiety in learning. It was in a chapter by Sigmund Tobias called “Learner Characteristics” in the paragraph, he discusses the role anxiety can play in learning and I thought that even though we usually think of children in school having anxiety around learning, I think adults do as well.

In some instances, it is displayed as a kind of in-class arrogance and other times as apathy. It occurs both within classroom environments as well as in e-learning.

Anxiety is one of the learner characteristics of major importance for instructional concerns. Anxiety has generally been defined as an affective statec haracterized by unpleasant feelings which are similar to fear or apprehension (Sieber, 1977). Different types of anxiety, such as test anxiety, mathematics anxiety, or speech anxiety are similar in that they describe the unpleasant, fear-like affective state, although they different with respect to the particular situations which evoke this state.

It is important as designers of instruction to think about reducing anxiety for the learner.

• One of the ways of doing this is through storytelling, people tend to be less anxious when they are listening to a story as opposed to being lectured (through a classroom lecture or on-screen audio).
• Games are another way. Being asked to participate in a game can reduce anxiety about the content of material a person needs to learn.
  
• Another technique is to reduce the perceived consequences for failure. Again, games are great with this because they give you multiple lives, many different chances and failure or incorrect answers are accepted within a game environment.
• Another technique is to show the learner that others, just like themselves, have been successful in learning the material. This can be through testimonials or other techniques.

These types of techniques can help instructional designers address the, often unspoken, issue of anxiety of learners. The truth is that our instruction can only be effective if it impacts both the cognitive area of the brain as well as the affective or emotional area and if a person is too anxious about learning then the best designed instruction won’t work unless it also helps to reduce anxiety.

References:
Tobias, S. (1987) Learner Characteristics. In Gagne, R. Instructional Technology Foundations. Hillsdale NJ; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 218.

Sieber, J.E. (1977) How shall anxiety be defined? In J. E. Sieber, H.F. ON’Neil Jr., & Tobias, S. Anxiety Learning and Instruction. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.