The Learning Hook

Can you recall a class that you took or a learning course that you had to go through that instantly grabbed your attention? What was it about the course that grabbed your attention like that?

That was a learning Hook!

What is a learning hook? A learning Hook is something that grabs the learner’s attention.

Something that would make them instantly engage with the learning.

So how can we go about developing a learning hook? Well, a learning hook can come from a number of areas.

It could be talking about a current event.

It could be talking about an ethical or moral dilemma.

It could be talking about something that may have directly impacted the learner.

It could even be a curious fact, or a mystery or an interesting story.

For example,

I was once teaching a sales and marketing course and prior to starting any course I usually try to  

know my cohort as in, what would they like to do what is it that they find interesting and so on and so forth.

So, during my initial interactions I realize that the vast majority of the learners in the course wanted to open up their own businesses.

So, before getting into the nitty gritty of the course and the learning material I asked them a question where they had to think of a business that they would like to start. They needed to describe how they would go about marketing their business, how they would go about telling their potential customers about their business to get them interested. I also told them that they only have five minutes to do so and that it's going to be for a small business, and, you know, Mom and Dad, business, and they don't have a whole lot of funds to begin with.

The reason why I did that was because I realized that my cohort actually wants to start their businesses. Now I could have dived into the learning material as well and started teaching them the course topics. But going with a problem-solving approach seemed like a better idea. We human beings like to solve problems, problem solving, is what gets our creative juices flowing. Problem solving is what most of us find interesting.

We may differ on what kind of problems we like to solve. But problem solving in general is something that we find engaging, be it academia be it playing games and sports, we are essentially trying to solve problems. If for example we are playing a game of soccer, the problem is, I have a ball on the ground and I need to get it to the goalpost of the other teams. So how do I go about doing it? Who do I pass the ball to and what sort of game plan, do we need to have?

So, my plan was that they will come up with their business strategy and how to market and then based on those things, I will get them to keep the record of your plan or maybe stick it up on one of the walls of the classroom. And then we go through the course while referring back to their initial strategy.

Hopefully with the new knowledge gained through the course they will refine their way of thinking and perhaps refine their business strategy as well.

As soon as I presented them with this problem, they all got busy trying to form the strategy around how they will popularize their business and so on and so forth. And there was a noticeable change in the energy level of the room. Some of the students were initially leaning back on their chairs and had a bored and uninterested look on their faces. But after getting this this puzzle to solve, I noticed their body language changed. they were much closer to their benches.

There was an eagerness on their faces.

And then gradually as the class progress to the different weeks and to the different topics. I could see that initial learning hook, was still there, because anytime a new sales and marketing concept came into the picture it would be referred and compared against that business strategy that was developed on the very first day.

That’s the power of the learning hook.

Once you have it, things get going, ideas start flowing thick and fast. Through these ideas and interactions people learn a lot of stuff, a lot more quickly than they otherwise would have, were they just listening to the sage on the stage while taking only a somewhat lackadaisical interest in their learning content.