XplanaZine

It was a couple of decades and more than a few pounds ago. My brother had participated in a couple of triathlons and I decided the requisite workouts might add some needed structure to my bohemian graduate student existence. So, I borrowed my brother’s old bike, invested in a pair of swim goggles, and started to train.

Now, I should say a word here about the bike my brother had loaned me. It was an old Huffy 3-speed he had bought at a discount store and it was intended strictly for recreational riding. The thing had a single gearshift in the middle of the handlebars — something like the old dash shifter on a Renault 4 — weighed more than forty pounds, and had gruesomely thick tires. My brother had actually tried to sell her at a pawn shop the year before but the owner told him he wouldn’t accept the bike unless my brother also gave him ten dollars in cash.

Bit I loved and appreciated that bike. And, to tell you the truth, back then I didn’t know the difference between a good bike and a bad bike. I was just a guy trying to put in training miles. I rode it up hills and down hills. I rode it in the rain and in the fog. I rode it everywhere.

And, six months later, I entered my first race. It was a standard distance — 1K swim, 30K bike ride, and 10K run — and I had the proud distinction of actually finishing the event under my own power. It was a grand experience.

One thing that struck me as I was going through the event, however, was the obvious gap between the quality of my bike and the rides of the other participants. Their equipment weighed half what mine did and their bikes seemed to glide along while mine required serious leg work. So, I started putting some money back and, in a couple of months, bought myself a fancy Peugeot. It was light, sleek, and had thin mean racing tires. It was like I had died and gone to heaven.

Well a funny thing happened over the next year. I kept entering races and eventually participated in the same event I had started out in — the same distances and the same course. Now, imagine my surprise at the end of the race when they gave me my time splits and I discovered that, with my sleek racing machine, I had actually finished the bike portion of the race at a slower place that the previous year when I had been riding my old Huffy. In fact, from the time I bought my new bike, I had consistently ridden slower. It was lighter, easier to ride, and definitely more streamlined. And, for some reason, I didn’t race as fast using it.

That reality perplexed me for awhile until, after some reflection, I arrived at an important maxim that could be applied to many future situations — “It’s the legs that do the work.” You see, somehow, I’d been under the impression that just by buying a better bike I would ride faster and be more invincible. The reality is that the new machine was so easy that I let up, didn’t work as hard, and actually performed worse. The old Huffy was heavy and unwieldy, but it gave me stronger legs and a stronger will. And, in the end, my body was the machine that mattered most.

“It’s the legs that do the work.” Like I said, it’s a good maxim for many situations. It particular, it’s one I’m often reminded of as I design online courses and try to build innovative frameworks for immersive learning experiences. As technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, it’s easy to forget that the quality of instruction is still dependent, ultimately, on the instructor and the quality of the content itself.

I was thinking about this again yesterday as I worked on a concept course that serves as a model for creating online immersion experiences. As my colleagues and I shared ideas and talked about technological solutions for our concept, I found myself musing privately that our success was not nearly as dependent on the technology as it was on the philosophy, vision, and narrative of the project. In other words, “It’s the legs that do the work.”

The reality is that building online instruction these days is an awful lot like creating a good Sci-Fi movie. The temptation is to get caught up in the special effects and action. But the box office payoff is going to depend on a great story and strong performances by actors. Similarly, our temptation is to become preoccupied with LMS platforms, media decisions, and newfangled ways to get students to talk to each other. The truth is that none of these things matter at all without a clear course vision, sound pedagogy, and a great content story. If you have those things, they will play in any learning theater regardless of the technology available.

Don’t get me wrong. I love using and promoting the use of technology in education. It’s just that, the more I use it, the more clearly I understands its limitations.

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