Aesthetic Principles 1
Running Head: AESTHETIC PRINCIPLES
Embracing the Aesthetics of Instructional Design
Patrick E. Parrish
The COMET® Program, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Prepared for IVLA Conference, October, 2005
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Aesthetic Principles for Learning Experience Design
Why Care About Learning Experience?
Teachers and IDs have three traditional components of the instructional
environment that vie for their attention. First, there is subject matter, the central
component, and at times perhaps only important component, in traditional education.
Then there is methodology, the instructional strategies employed to instigate learning.
Methodology is often seen as something applied to subject matter, and it is the
component that typically is of most interest to instructional designers. Finally, there is the
learner. Most instructional designers and progressive educators see themselves as learnerfocused, even if only through their choice of methodology. In other words, they may
frequently allow learners to bring their own intentions to the table, or they may provide
opportunities for individualized instruction based on readiness, learning style, and
personal relevance.
A fourth component of the instructional environment, one that encompasses
subject matter, methodology, and the learner, is learner experience. Learner experience
describes the way that the learner interacts with and responds to the subject matter and
methodology, and the instructor as well—who is the fifth component. (See Figure 1. Of
course, many other aspects of the environment influence learning and instruction, and
these are simply depicted in the catch-all sixth component, “Other Context.” These
include fellow learners, the physical and cultural environment, and the broader
community. My assumption here is that these impact the instructional environment by
providing affordances and constraints to the other components.) The learning experience
will be different for each learner, depending on the connection they make to the other
components of the situation, and depending on what they bring to it. What we strive for
in instruction is to foster learning experiences in which the learner becomes highly
engaged with the subject matter, methodology, and instructor, because that is when we
know they will consider the instruction meaningful, worth reflecting upon, and,
ultimately when they will learn best.
The importance of viewing learning in terms of experience is straightforward—
learning happens only within experience. In this context I’m not using “experience” in
the simple sense something of that happens to us. I use it in the sense of the old saying,
“Experience is the best teacher.” Experience is an active event. Its name is rooted in the
same Indo-European words as “experiment” and “peril.” In an experience, we first have a
felt need to improve a situation or resolve a question or perplexing issue, so we generate
an idea that has potential to help us do so. In the process of trying out the idea, whether
by directly changing something in our environment or by running the idea through our
mental landscape and then comparing it to our observations, results come back to us
about its viability, and we change in response. When we are conscious of the change in
ourselves, we call it learning. This circuit of felt need, idea generation and testing,
feedback, and learning is what we call experience (Dewey, 1916). The same pattern is
basic to all efforts a reflective organism makes to achieve stability in its environment
(Hickman, 1998). It is the basis of experiences as diverse as recognizing which dogs will
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be safe to pet without danger of being bitten, the long process of decoding the sequence
of the human genome, and enjoying a good mystery novel.
Figure 1: Components of Instructional Environments
Learning experiences have many qualities, including cognitive qualities of course.
But they also have emotional, social, cultural, political, and aesthetic ones. All of these
come into play in determining the lasting impact of an experience. A utilitarian view of
learning may only consider the immediately measurable outcomes of a learning
experience. But a more inclusive view, one that values a growing capacity to learn and
not just accumulated knowledge, will consider the continuity of experiences, and will be
concerned with how the quality of an experience impacts the meaning we attribute to it.
Meaningful experiences will lead us to engage not only in the immediate situation, but in
the future experiences it points to.
Aesthetic experiences are heightened, particularly meaningful ones (Dewey,
1934). They are the ones that stand out as complete in themselves, and as providing an
immediately felt impact (although not always one measurable in cognitive terms). The
opposite of aesthetic experience is boredom, disengaged habitual behavior, or imposed
labor. During an aesthetic experience, we feel an impending consummation and the
promise of revelation of meaning. We don’t necessarily have a metacognitive awareness
of this feeling of promise, because we may become momentarily quite lost in the
experience in those terms. But we feel the emotionally charged nature when in the midst
of aesthetic experience, engage with it deeply, and choose to see it through to its
completion. Because we want learners to have this type of experience in the instructional
situations we create, because we want them as fully engaged as possible, we need to work
to make their learning experiences aesthetic.
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Sources of Aesthetic Principles
Potential sources of principles for guiding the creation of aesthetic learning
experiences may not be obvious until we consider the affinities between making art and
designing instruction. As John Dewey puts it, works of art are merely “refined and
intensified forms of experience” (1934, p. 3), and not different from other domains of
experience. In creating instructional designs, we are also in the business of creating
“refined and intensified forms of experience,” yet we typically avoid talking about their
aesthetic qualities (Parrish, 2005). While instruction is not art in the narrow, modern
sense of the word, it can and should be artful in its approaches.
The aesthetic principles offered in this paper are drawn from multiple sources.
First is my own research into the aesthetic decisions of instructional designers and
teachers (Parrish, 2004). In this study, I performed in-depth interviews to investigate how
instructional designers and teachers imagined learner experiences with a particular course
or online learning module. Secondly, because I believe that the arts can be a primary
source of strategies for achieving aesthetic learning experiences, I look to Aristotle’s
Poetics, probably the most influential historic source of aesthetic principles, and one that
continues to inform artists and designers to this day (Laurel, 1993; Tierno, 2002). (Along
with Aristotle, other numerous readings and musings on the aesthetics of particular art
forms also influenced the list and the individual rationales.) I also look to John Dewey
and his conception of Pragmatist aesthetics (Dewey, 1934). Although Dewey offers no
systematic aesthetic principles, his description of aesthetic experience does suggest
several guiding principles. Finally, my choice of principles is informed by current
learning theory. Aesthetic experience is not ignored by learning theory except in name.
My assumption has been that most aesthetic principles will have parallels in information
processing, constructivist, and social learning theories, because aesthetic experience
underlies all our efforts to find or create meaning.
First Principles
This section offers three first principles of an instructional poetics, or guidelines
for artful instruction. The rest of the principles offered will fall within the context of these
first three, which correspond to three common concerns of literary criticism—plot,
character, and theme. Literary criticism is not the only useful source of principles for
artful instruction, but with the focus literature and drama place on human activity, human
growth, and temporal structure, it is an especially rich source. However, plot, character,
and theme are not without their parallels in the visual arts and music, so these are also
useful. Plot can be seen as the arrangement of formal elements in any art form, and theme
is the aesthetic inquiry undertaken—the driving force instigating the work. Character may
have less obvious parallels in the other arts, but it might be seen as the human emotion
explored within any work of art. Plot, character, and theme are a useful organization for
discussing aesthetic learning principles, because they correspond to the instructional
components discussed previously—methodology, learner, and subject matter,
respectively.
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Principle 1: Learning Experiences Have Beginnings, Middles, and Endings (i.e., Plots).
While this principle may appear obvious, it isn’t clear that we apply our
awareness of these sequential phases of instruction and care for their unique needs and
potentials. To say that learning has these three phases is merely to say that learners have
different thoughts and feelings when first becoming engaged, when the pattern of the
instruction becomes evident and accepted, and when coming to its close. For example,
beginnings call for creating tension or mystery and developing trust that the tension can
be resolved, middles call for continual renewal of the initial engagement and
reinforcement of the potential consummation, and endings call for an emotional intensity
that heightens the experience and a chance for reflection that connects everything that has
come before into organic unity. If we pay attention to the needs, thoughts, and feelings of
learners in these phases, and anticipate them in our instructional designs, we have a better
chance to create an aesthetic learning experience.
Principle 2: Allow Learners to Be the Protagonists in Their Own Learning Experience.
Tempting as it might be to consider the subject matter as the lead character in a
learning experience, it is the learner who is having the experience. In works of art, we
vicariously experience the events along with the protagonist and are led to a similar
revelation, but there is nothing vicarious about a learning experience. Even though
learners may be learning about the struggles and achievements of others, a learner’s
primary concern is their own struggles and achievements in learning. The desire to learn
isn’t always selfishly motivated, of course. It may be driven by a desire to understand
others and how to help them, for example. But learning itself is always an experience
involving personal struggle.
Even within the same course, learners have very different learning experiences
depending on how they how they view their relationship to the situation. Some may take
a tragic perspective and see themselves as oppressed protagonists with the tragic flaw of
ignorance (along with potential laziness, insufficient intelligence, etc.), struggling to
overcome their own inadequacy to succeed in the course. Alternatively, some may see the
experience as comedy—as a series of embarrassing episodes in which their ignorance
places them in difficult, but reconcilable, situations. Others may see their role as heroic,
with the course taking on epic proportions as they confront one difficult labor after
another, imposed as obstacles to their goal. Whatever their choice of roles, learning is
always a perilous undertaking, one in which the learner voluntarily places themselves in a
vulnerable situation. It may be important to get students to realize the protagonist they
have chosen to emulate, but also to use that choice to guide instructional decisions that
will provide the proper motivation and sense of accomplishment.
Principle 3: Learning activity, Not Subject Matter, Establishes the Theme of Instruction.
Like every work of art, every learning experience has an underlying theme. In an
art work, this theme is never so broad that it can be stated in a single word, like “love” or
“justice.” Neither is a useful learning theme as broad as “Anthropology” or “Computer
Science.” Instead, a theme should more like an “action-idea” (Tierno, 2002), an
embodiment of the cause and effect relationship that arises from the more fundamental
premise of the story (Egri, 1942). For example, the premise to Macbeth is not “ambition”
or “corruption,” but something more like “ruthless ambition leads to corruption and self
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destruction.” The action-idea (or theme) that arises from this premise might be written as,
“Macbeth, driven by his own ambition and encouraged by his wife, murders the king and
attempts to assume the thrown. This sets in action a course of events that leads to more
murders, madness, and rebellion that never allow Macbeth to enjoy his new status.”
Similarly, it’s not enough for a learning experience to be based simply on subject
matter. Subject matter should be couched in an action-idea that guides the experience and
turns it into tangible activity. Rather than simply “Anthropology,” or even the premise,
“Systematic study can discern patterns of human culture that allow us appreciate
meaningful similarities and differences between cultures,” the more useful instructional
action idea might be, “The learner follows a systematic study of several exotic cultures,
and then in the end uses this systematic method as a new tool for studying her own and
more familiar cultures as well for comparison.” In other words, the activity of the course
is evident from the start, not merely layered onto the topical agenda. With an action-idea
guiding the design of learning activities, we can be more confident that the instruction
will be a learning experience, and that its aesthetic qualities can arise.
\
Secondary Principles
This concluding set of principles provides elaboration to the First Principles
above.
Principle 1: Learning Experiences Have Beginnings, Middles, and Endings (i.e., Plots).
Principle 1.1: Begin by instilling tension, posing a problem, or pointing out conflicting
information.
To become engaged, a learner has to have a felt need to do so. This need
frequently translates into a problematic situation, but it doesn’t have to be a problem in
the traditional sense. Works of art frequently begin by establishing normalcy—a
recognizable and acceptable situation, or a harmonious pattern—and then introduce
conflict that violates this normalcy. The conflict introduces the need for reconciliation,
and instigates the engagement to see it worked out. The conflict in narratives often
involves thrusting likeable, recognizable characters into threatening situations. In music it
involves pitting contrasting keys against one another. In the visual arts, it might be the
surrealist tactic of placing everyday objects in surprising juxtapositions, or challenging
the viewer to reconsider what is meant by art to begin with—think Marcel Duchamp’s
famous urinal. Table 1 lists several pairs of conditions that establish tension in works of
art (and in life).
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Table 1
___________________________Aesthetic Tensions________________________
Unity
Separation
Permanence
Transience
Stability
Novelty
Pattern
Chaos/Perturbation
Harmony
Dissonance
Closed (Bounded) Open-ended
Simplicity
Complexity
____________________________________________________________________
Instructional situations might begin with conflicting ideas or theories. An
instructor might pose a commonsense mental model, and then offer conflicting evidence.
Instruction might be centered on a realistic problem, as is done in problem-based or casebased learning. There are myriad ways to impose conflict in instruction, and any one of
them will be better than merely beginning to describe subject matter. Aristotle describes
this as setting up the “complication,” and this can include events that happen prior to the
beginning of the narrative. Everything that follows is the “denouement,” or working out
of the complication (Aristotle, trans. 1984). The bulk of an instructional event should feel
like denouement, but this can only happen with a rich complication to set it in motion.
Principle 1.2: Learning experiences should create anticipation of consummation.
The end of the denouement is consummation, the rewarding feeling that it all
hangs together. In instruction, consummation involves achieving clear understanding of
the key objectives, but more importantly, seeing how they fit together and toward what
coherent end they were chosen in the first place. The end must be not only achievable; it
should be pointed to or hinted at from the start. In other words you have to have an end in
mind and let the learner know that you do, but without just handing it over. This is a
matter of establishing trust, which can be achieved by providing interim rewards of
consummation for smaller scale tensions. In cheap horror movies, where frequent
tensions are consistently resolved with the discovery of a mere nosey cat or teasing
friend, we quickly lose trust and disengage, or perhaps decide to go along with the ride
for the thrills, but without deep engagement in the story. Interim rewards must also be
meaningful.
Principle 1.3: Create suspense by withholding information, enhancing the complication,
or providing misdirection.
This principle obviously contradicts some behaviorist or cognitive load theory
notions of chunking instruction into simple, achievable components. But engagement is
build on more than sustaining a feeling of achievement. It requires continual struggle and
expectation. The middle or “second-act” of dramatic works is often considered the most
difficult (Hunter, 1993). The second act is where the deeper complexity of the plot is
revealed, but after the luxury of novelty has worn off. Complicating events must be new,
but without violating the environment and character already established. Otherwise, trust
is in danger. The middle movements in music and movies are often more quiet and
thoughtful, revealing depth, and providing a respite before a more boisterous ending.
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In instructional situations, the second act is where the work of learning can begin
to feel like work. Student engagement needs to be continually reinforced to avoid having
it become boring routine. Carefully introducing new tensions, surprises, and increasing
complication is one way. If you’ve established trust, you can get away with a degree of
withholding and even misdirection, like not telling students the real purpose of an
exercise until they’ve completed it, or leading toward a logical mistake in thinking that
you can then reveal as wanting (remember the methods of Socrates). Withholding and
misdirection can add an air of mystery or an enjoyable frustration of expectations.
Principle 1.4: Pattern, routine, or an established motif can sustain engagement.
Motif is a critical component of nearly every work of art. In music and narrative
arts, repetition reminds us that the piece is of a whole and motif provides a comfortable
and familiar stop along the journey. It also provides a yardstick to reveal how things are
changing or how they are connected. When a motif recurs in different contexts, we are
being asked to compare those contexts. Pattern performs a similar function, providing a
contrast for new forms to stand out and staving off chaos. Without it, novelty would lose
its novelty, and chaos would dissolve the integrity of the experience.
Middle phases of instruction may require a degree of pattern or routine to create a
level of comfort to accompany all the work involved—even if that pattern involves a
series of tension generating problem cycles. Bringing back motifs from early in the
instruction, in the form of repeated examples, ideas, or theories, also provides an anchor
for new learning to take place, and helps to show how it is all fitting together.
Principle 1.5: Endings should integrate everything that has occurred up to that point.
We want an ending to not be simply a stopping point; we want it to be a
culmination and consummation of the activity that led to it. This kind of ending
contributes to making the experience meaningful and not merely a sequence of events.
Without it, the experience is not aesthetic. The ending of a narrative needs to tie up loose
ends, not introduce new ones (unless the pervasive nature of loose ends drives the theme
of the work). It needs to justify the effort it took to engage with the work from start to
finish.
The ending of an instructional event shouldn’t consist simply of completing the
last section of subject matter or mastering the last objective, it should include practicing a
target objective that subsumes all the others. It should also provide a backward glance
that brings the entire learning experience into focus. The ending should be an exhilarating
phase, like the final movement of a symphony. It may occur in a fluster of activity, like
completing a final project or paper, or preparing for a culminating exam. However it
occurs, it should mark the experience with heightened emotion.
Principle 1.6: While learning experiences are complete in themselves, they also connect
to past and future experience.
While we want closure, we also want art to connect to our lives. Aesthetic
experiences are integral, but they don’t disregard what person brings to them and where
they might lead. Learners bring an accumulation of life experiences, a set of
preconceptions, personal goals, and intentions. These can be acknowledged by setting up
aesthetic tensions that will challenge and engage them. Learners take away new
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capabilities and new perspectives that can be applied in future learning experiences. We
can remind learners that these future opportunities exist, and that they now have new
tools to address them. Artists as well acknowledge our previous experience by building
upon it or by challenging it. They acknowledge our future by suggesting how the current
aesthetic experience might color future perceptions of the world.
Principle 2: Allow Learners to Be the Protagonists in Their Own Learning Experience.
Principle 2.1 Accept that learners, as protagonists, are fully human.
As Aristotle reminds us, good dramatic characters are realistic (Aristotle, trans.
1984). They have flaws, goals, desires, basic needs, senses, and their own brand of
rational thought. If they didn’t, we couldn’t relate to them as strongly, and the drama
would have less impact. Because learners are acting as their own protagonists in their
learning experience, they should be allowed to express their individuality without it
seeming to detract from your predetermined plan of action. If they can’t engage in it by
being themselves, the experience is unlikely to be aesthetic. (This doesn’t mean they
can’t, or shouldn’t, change in the course of instruction, just as characters change.)
When Aristotle also tells us that plot, and not character, is central to drama, he is
merely reminding us that continuity of character is not enough to hold a work together.
Plot is primary in doing that. But at the same time, he reminds us that plot must arise
from character, and not merely be imposed on characters. In other words, the reality of
our learners should also to a degree drive what happens within instruction.
Principle 2.2 Stage or encourage a turning point or “aha” moment.
Nearly all drama reaches a point of revelation in which the protagonist realizes his
mistake or limitations, or understands what must be done. This can sometimes be the
emotional high point, which may or may not coincide with the high point of action within
the conclusion. This realization should always be foreshadowed in the sense that all
information leading to it should have been readily available to the protagonist (and
audience). Otherwise, trust is again at risk.
“Aha”-style learning moments may not be predictable, and they may occur at very
different times for different learners, or they may not occur at all. But they can be made
more likely to occur if sufficient information and tools are provided, skills demonstrated,
and possible approaches foreshadowed with examples. Epiphanies can’t be handed over.
But they can be encouraged to occur in a prepared-for moment of discovery.
Principle 2.3 Foster a change or growth in sense of identity, make learning a rite of
passage.
Like instruction, art is about change. It depicts the change in a protagonist, or
encourages a viewer’s own change of perception, belief, or emotional disposition. To
make learning a more deeply felt experience, we can stimulate a learner’s identification
as protagonist and encourage them to view learning as change or growth in identity. This
can be done with the language we use in talking with learners, and particularly with how
we change that language over the course of the instruction, referring to them less as
novices and more as practitioners or cognoscenti. We can include discussion of what it
means to be knowledgeable, and what can be done as a consequence of becoming
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knowledgeable. In addition, the ending phase of instruction can include “rite of passage”
activities, including awards, shifting roles (for example, learner as teacher in making a
final presentation), or a celebration of graduation.
Principle 3: Learning activity, not subject matter, establishes the theme of instruction.
Principle 3.1: Theme arises from subject matter, but it isn’t subject matter.
I have previously proposed the principle that learning activity, and not subject
matter, establishes the theme of the instruction. But subject matter should be the arbiter
when deciding what learning activities are possible and useful. Aesthetic principles
shouldn’t be used to simply “spruce” up instruction. Sources of aesthetic tension and
consummation should arise from problems and issues emerging from the subject matter,
and not be imposed arbitrarily.
Principle 3.2: The theme should be believable and connect to experience.
The subject matter may be well trod ground by instructors, but it is typically quite
foreign to learners. Subject matter represents the culmination of a history of research
within a domain of knowledge, and it can’t simply be passed off to learners to be
absorbed as their own knowledge. If we believe learning arises from experience, learners
need experience that allows them to engage with that domain of knowledge, just as the
historical researchers needed experience in creating the body of knowledge that
comprises the subject matter (Dewey, 1916).
Simply starting with the subject matter is not enough. The premise of the course
should be something students can currently relate to and understand. The theme should
describe how they can get from where they are, through activities, to a higher level of
knowledge and ability to use the subject matter, not simply recall it.
Hollywood producers are infamous for requiring that a proposed film project be
summed up in a one- or two-sentence “pitch.” Aristotle actually supports this as well,
telling us that we should be able to frame the work so that even hearing a summary of it
elicits a strong emotional response (Aristotle, trans. 1984). Stating the theme of the
course can’t stimulate learning, but it should be able to describe the experience that will.
A Final Principle
Principle 4: Bare your soul
At the start, I mislead you in saying that I would provide only three First
Principles. In reality, a fourth First Principle is called for that relates to the instructor or
instructional designer, the last component I mentioned as necessary to an instructional
environment. An instructor does much more than orchestrate the other components. He or
she is an active of contributor, just as much as any other component. The instructor is a
key character in the aesthetic experience of learning. While not typically a protagonist,
the instructor sometime acts in a role similar to that of Greek chorus, commenting on the
dramatic developments, or sometimes as an important companion character that serves as
confidant, and who acts a provocateur or mirror. The instructor can also play the role as
wizened guide—one who knows the perils that lurk down each learning path, and, while
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not able to prevent the learner from having to take that path, can provide tools and
magical objects to help along the way.
But instructors also have an important role as experienced learners, or model
protagonists. Instructors should bare their soul in finding approaches to the subject matter
that will engage learners. They should share what it is that motivates their own practice,
or led them to their field of knowledge. They should share what perplexes them still,
what frustrates them and angers them about the field. They should share regrets.
Instructional designers should mine for these motivations, frustrations, and regrets from
their subject matter experts, and not be lulled into recounting only their summarized
expert knowledge. If we can’t as instructors get excited about what we are teaching and
express that excitement to our learners, how can we expect our learners to become fully
engaged? We can tell when an artist is holding back and not baring her soul to us in the
work of art. We come to expect that in great works of art the artist will reveal truths that
are drawn deeply from their own life experiences. Learners should expect the same.
References
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Two, pp. 2316-2340). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Minton, Balch.
Egri, L. (1942). The art of dramatic writing: Its basis in the creative interpretation of
human motives. New York: Touchstone.
Hickman, L. A. (1998). Dewey's theory of inquiry. In L. A. Hickman (Ed.), Reading
dewey: Interpretations for a postmodern generation (pp. 166-186). Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Hunter, L. (1993). Lew hunter's screenwriting 434. New York: Perigee Books.
Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as theatre. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Parrish, P. E. (2004). Investigating the aesthetic decisions of teachers and instructional
designers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, San Diego, CA. Available online at
http://www.comet.ucar.edu/~pparrish/.
Parrish, P. E. (2005). Embracing the aesthetics of instructional design. Educational
Technology, 45(2), 16-25.
Tierno, M. (2002). Aristotle's poetics for screenwriters. New York: Hyperion.