Challenge

This chapter explores the importance of setting effective difficulty in challenge based learning. In Chap. 4 the concept of flow was used to explain that learner motivation depends strongly on an effective level of difficulty—not too difficult to be frustrating but not too easy to be boring (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). While most educators grapple regularly with learners’ struggles with high difficulty, there is little discussion of the problems created when tasks and assessment are too easy. For many this is a non-issue. Framed by belief in grading as an effective motivator of learning, a task that is too easy would be appealing to a learner seeking fast and easy grades. However as Chap. 4 demonstrated, there is no evidence that grading provides any such motivation and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Further, belief structures formed by industrial education presume that a universal and standardised level of difficulty is the most efficient and fair foundation of learning design. But these beliefs are also predicated on the function of education being the evaluation and sorting of learners for the workplace destination, rather than focus on personalised learning journeys. The industrial approach also demands a very linear approach to learning design, both in the interests of efficiency and also to ensure a consistent and uniform experience for learners. The teacher has a defined role in setting and policing difficulty while the learners is a passive recipient of the difficulty setting process.