👕 How our brain is like a wardrobe

Think about a subject in which you have expertise. What kind of mental model do you have?

Is it a clear set of categories and distinctions which is pretty orderly?

Think about a subject in which you are a novice. What kind of mental model do you have?

Is there less structure and limited information?

If you hand a blue polo shirt 👕 to the expert Marie Kondo, best-selling author of the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying, she'll be able to decide quickly where to put it in the wardrobe because she already has a structure in place - on the polo shirt shelf, next to the other summer clothing, ordered by colour.

If you hand a blue polo shirt 👕 to a novice, they will likely look at it perplexed because they have no context for it - and it will get tossed onto the pile of clothing accumulating on the floor of their wardrobe.

So the key question is - how to help novices create structure in their wardrobes?

No single lesson or course will get novices to be experts - so the key is to help learners build a few shelves in their wardrobe so they can start to create context, make sense of what they’re learning and organise their thoughts.

Here are a few ways to help your learners build shelves:

Use a high-level organiser

Start them with structure that will help them organise what follows. This could be a road map of the broad categories or an overview of the key principles. Here's an example from Tatiana Figueiredo's Build a Community Business course:

Use visuals

Visual information contains several extra cues that give learners more hooks for storing and retrieving information.

Use a story

People have amazingly sticky memories for well-told stories, particularly ones that arouse emotions.

Use a metaphor or an analogy

Compare the subject matter to something that learners are already familiar with so that you can leverage the storage and retrieval capability of one of their existing mental models. Use something common and everyday that the learner can't help but be familiar with, like, say a wardrobe.

Don't just hand your learners information - help them construct and organise their framework for that information.

🎽 New feature - Rubrics!

Thanks to many instructors and learners feedback and conversations, we are excited to introduce rubrics to MySnapshot’s self-assessments!

What is a rubric? A rubric is a coherent set of criteria of a subject that indicates what levels of performance looks like. They help learners understand where they are at and how to score themselves.

Here’s a glimpse of our new rubric in action in Adam Davidson and JP King's Masterful Storytelling Self-Assessment. It gives clarity on what each performance level looks like and the opportunity to indicate slight or significant progression.

The genius of rubrics is that they are descriptive and not evaluative. Of course, rubrics can be used to evaluate, but the operating principle is you match the performance to the description rather than "judge" it.

When learners internalise the criteria, it encourages deep rather than surface learning, and greater autonomy.

🥊 Screenshot Interview: Mathilde Leo

​Mathilde Leo is Head of Community at Circle, an all-in-one community platform that brings together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat, events, and memberships - all in one place, under a company’s own brand.

Mathilde is a force of nature. Everyday she inspires and supports thousands of creators, brands and businesses to create the conditions for belonging in their community.

We caught up the other day on learning in community and Muay Thai:

🇬🇹 Fresh eyes!

After many fun Zoom calls with the incredible Stefy Bolaños and her team at Universidad Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala to begin collaborating on a new Snapshot for their students, I was excited to hang out with Stefy in London this week and experience it through the fresh eyes of a visitor.

To experiencing where we live with fresh eyes - have a great weekend friends!

Charlotte