Serendipity over Structure
I have vivid memories of childhood holidays exploring rock pools at the beach, lifting stones to uncover hidden creatures. I can almost hear myself calling out with excitement “Look a crab! Now what kind is that?”
The thrill was in serendipitous exploration; something we excel at as children!
The challenge in adult learning is we’re often reliant on structure such as courses, content and competency frameworks. But here’s the thing, too much structure can limit development!
Research shows our powerful learning often happens by accident. In everyday moments, we stumble upon lessons that are far more impactful than those structured training can deliver.
The evidence shows serendipity supercharges learning by …
- Increasing learner engagement through personal exploration. [1]
- Enabling new connections from diverse information. [2]
- Sparking insights that enhance critical thinking. [3]
- Fuelling creativity with information incubated for future use. [4]
- Expanding learning beyond the original query. [5]
- Allowing for the powerful intersection of chance and wisdom. [6]
And with AI this is now more possible where adaptive models can outperform fixed approaches helping learners discover valuable personal learning journeys [7].
Serendipity may be rooted in chance, but – perhaps counterintuitively – we can “design” environments that encourage learners to go “off piste” to benefit from unexpected learning.
Here are seven ideas to foster serendipitous learning …
Learning safaris to shadow other peers or team for cross-pollinated ideas.
Embedding reflective prompts into workflows to spark unplanned insights.
Allocating “serendipity slots” in meetings for unplanned discussions.
Inviting diverse or provocative voices into the mix to expand insights.
Facilitating “working out loud circles” for interactions on work opportunities.
Creating shared walls for posting ideas, images, quotes or articles.
Unlikely book clubs where a text from a very different discipline is explored.
The truth is great learning is messy because it’s human.
In a world that demands greater agility, curiosity and critical thinking – we often don’t need more structure – we need more space to explore.
This isn’t about chaos. It’s about deliberate unpredictability.
So, a challenge … in learning is it time for less structure and more purposeful wandering?
References
[1] Fu, Z., Niu, X., & Maher, M. (2023). Deep Learning Models for Serendipity Recommendations: A Survey and New Perspectives. ACM Computing Surveys, 56, 1 – 26. https://doi.org/10.1145/3605145
[2] Giurgiu, L., Bârsan, G., & Moșteanu, D. (2013). INSPIRED BY THE UNEXPECTED – SERENDIPITOUS LEARNING. eLearning and Software for Education. https://doi.org/10.12753/2066-026x-13-085
[3] Inoue, S., Ayedoun, E., Takenouchi, H., & Tokumaru, M. (2024). Leveraging Interactive Evolutionary Computation to Induce Serendipity in Informal Learning. Multimodal Technol. Interact., 8, 103. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti8110103
[4] McCay-Peet, L., & Toms, E. (2010). The process of serendipity in knowledge work. IIiX ’10: Proceedings of the third symposium on Information interaction in context, 377-382. https://doi.org/10.1145/1840784.1840842
[5] Bragg, S., & Freedy, J. (2022). Serendipitous discovery: Learning through the review of research. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 57, 183 – 186. https://doi.org/10.1177/00912174221093164
[6] Copeland, S. (2019). On serendipity in science: discovery at the intersection of chance and wisdom. Synthese, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1544-3
[7] Fan, X., & Niu, X. (2018). Implementing and Evaluating Serendipity in Delivering Personalized Health Information. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems (TMIS), 9, 1 – 19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3205849
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Mark Reilly, Head of Learning Content Design, Global Learning and Development, McDonald’s Global Franchising Ltd.
Gavin McQuillan, Head of Learning and Development, RBS
