Conferences don't have to be something you just endure. You don't have to be contented saying "hello" to a couple of people you email twice a month, eating some dry sandwiches, and completely forgetting what that guy said as soon as he walked off the stage. Instead, events should be a space to learn, develop, and create two-way conversations about your industry.
That's why we're here to help.
Most professional conferences consist of a series of 20–40 minute presentations followed by 5–10 minutes of Q&A. The issue is that considering what is known about learning & development, there is a question mark over the learning efficacy of such massive one-way communication.
While there has been much research and experimentation in every other domain of education, the conference, viewed as a forum for learning, still largely considers the role of learners as passive receivers of information.
But learning-by-doing is a well-established approach to education. This refers to a theory promoted by American philosopher John Dewey; it's a hands-on approach to learning, meaning students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. So, why do we insist on passive, un-interactive learning for working professionals?
But first up, let's see where traditional conferences are going wrong.
The Traditional Conference
I refer to professional conferences where professionals and informed laypeople attend for a day or two and listen to subject matter experts (SMEs) share case studies and insights on best practices. Against this type of ‘professional conference’, Ravn and Elsborg, writing in the International Journal of Learning and Change (January 2011), posit six points of critique:
So, the traditional conference tends to lean towards the transfer model, easily recognised as the technique used in traditional classroom learning, i.e. sit down, shut up, and take notes. Basically, speakers communicate information to the attendees, who passively receive this information and absorb it. But this doesn't work in practice.
That's why alternatives are needed. Short, engaging speaker events, like the ones at AntiConLXA, offer a more focused audience, with a Campus experience allowing attendees to interact with other learners on a one-to-one basis. Event attendees are encouraged to walk between events and stalls, discuss with others at the bar and street food stalls, and get involved in the Q&As, all of which contribute to a tactile learning environment.
In the past and even today, much of the education people receive is based on the transfer model. Tapscott (1998) calls this broadcast learning. Tapscott says “the term teacher implies approaches to learning where an expert who has information transmits or broadcasts it to students”. However, this suggests that the mind is like an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge. It’s not that simple.
This model and its various assumptions about the human mind have been critiqued extensively over the past decades: the mind is no passive information storage device (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986), tabula rasa (Pinker, 2002), or empty knowledge container (Illeris, 2004).
Towards The Conference As A Forum For Real Learning
Ravn and Elsborg, writing in the International Journal of Learning and Change (January 2011), suggest the following design principles to stimulate learning beyond the traditional transfer model.
For each of these principles, there may be multiple techniques that can be deployed. Ravn and Elsborg, writing in the International Journal of Learning and Change (January 2011), list some techniques as follows: