Intentionality

Each of us learn something every day. We might not learn whole and useful facts, or even specific skills, but we are using our senses to observe, process, and navigate the world around us. Those small daily experiences accrete to form knowledge. When you move to a new home, with time you will come to understand your neighborhood and your home’s location in relation to other landmarks; eventually, you will be able to give directions to a friend when a road closure eliminates the easiest path to your door. How did you learn your neighborhood well enough to provide your friend with a detour route? Did you make an intentional effort to explore every detail of your neighborhood? Or was your understanding incidental, meaning that it just happened without much of a planful effort for learning on your part?

Intentionality is a core principle of education. It is even more critical for instructional design and therefore is intrinsic to a wise and learned process of technology integration. When we design a learning experience and plan for learning outcomes, we are being intentional about what our students learn and what they will be able to do with that knowledge or skill. The opposite of intentional learning would be incidental learning—where what is learned happens without the planning of an externally designed and implemented structure. Incidental learning is not bad—not in any way, shape, or form. But incidental learning is, by its nature, unplanned, and therefore it becomes difficult to declare in advance what students will learn or be able to do as a result of that learning experience. A backpacking trip led by the National Outdoor Leadership School^® (NOLS) or a Caravan^®-escorted road trip across Europe are particularly valuable—and sought-after—incidental learning experiences. Participants with NOLS or Caravan may receive general outlines about what they will visit and experience, but each trip will most likely be different, and therefore not every skill or fact can be identified in advance.

The intentional design of learning and instruction becomes immediately necessary when planning for learners’ active engagement. To use a layperson term, we could say that it is the planful design of the learners’ engagement that differentiates learning activities from busywork. We each have likely experienced what we perceived to be busywork, and even without a formal study in the education field, we would have known that busywork is more frustrating than it is educational. Anyone who has taught a group of energetic and inquisitive children, or even a highly sociable and enthusiastic group of adults, would appreciate the value that active engagement brings to the learning setting. When engagement is well-planned, as well as properly aligned with both the objectives of your instruction and the assessments you will use to identify when learning has occurred, the learners might very well learn what you wanted them to without lengthy lectures.

Active engagement is deceptively challenging in some cases. Think about the proverbial image of teaching a person to swim by throwing them into the deep end of a swimming pool. Some learners may be able to survive and eventually swim without much intervention, while others might simply drown—game over! Conversely, an entire swimming course that asked learners to play volleyball in shallow water up to their knees would also be a disservice to the learners in light of the target learning objectives. A well-planned set of learning activities—the opposite of a thoughtless toss into the deep end or an overly simplistic aim to have the participants get wet—would build both the learner’s confidence in the water and the physical capability for swimming.