I’ve been mulling over structure quite a bit of late, not the one we put in lesson plans, but that kind we sense in a learning space. This all started during a conversation with Leon, a friend of mine, who shared with me a visual table that encapsulated symbolic binaries like order vs chaos, pencil vs paintbrush, science vs myth. They had even voted on where to place each item, and the results showed very homogenously in yellow cells.
The visual scaffolding in the table serves to contrast the symbolic binaries of “Order” and “Chaos” in having both design aesthetics and cultural values. On the left: rationality and individualism, rules, and pencils. On the right: fluid identity, community, and emotion paintbrushes. Yellow highlight indicates team agreement. It showcases how societal conventions uncritically blend trait norms such as structure, order, and logic with command, while creativity, emotion, and difference become disempowered. In relation to YouTube as a platform, and English with Emma as a channel, it demonstrates how even what is deemed ‘accessible’ learning is saturated by orderly, institutionalized frameworks devoid of consideration—roster framework lacking in learner co-creation and cross-cultural amalgamation.
‘Pencil,’ ‘uniform,’ and ‘research’ corresponded in our minds to Order, while ‘paintbrush,’ ‘fashion,’ and ‘communal’ were automatically associated with Chaos. For me, the most interesting part was contemplating these concepts in terms of platforms where learning happens like Youtube, for instance.
Emma’s channel Engish with Emma was one of the primary sources for our LRNT 526 project. Emma’s videos are clear and accessible which makes them highly liked, but after working through Leon’s framework, a question popped in my head: what’s the order/chaos spectrum of the learning happening in the videos?
I discovered that learning, in this case, sits mostly in the Order side. I decided to adapt Leon’s table to map the dimensions of Emma’s content. Everything from the visual tone and pacing to feedback and cultural framing are mostly congruent to institutional design norms: the cool-toned set design, one-font captions, a single instructor voice, and grammar lesson recitation in structured, rule-driven sentences. While professional and polished, it remains highly linear, rigidly controlled, and rather individualistic.
What the Chaos column allowed me to see is that most of Emma’s design choices are fairly polished and easy to digest, but they are quite rigid and mostly not inclusive. Aesthetic, participatory, or culturally diverse elements seemed limited. Even slight changes such as creating jump-links for learner choice or inviting viewer-contributed idioms would loosen the grip of control and introduce just enough ‘chaos’ to make room for co-creation.
Ahn (2020) suggests that designing learning experiences equitably begins with considering who comes in the door: who is present, whose voice is represented, and what types of learning are deemed worthwhile. Viewing through that lens, a tightly-crafted, uniform instructional video disguised as accessible content still lacks inclusion.
What could change? Within the scope of my chart introducing small concepts, they ranged from jump-links or chapters enabling “choose-your-own-path” moments to culturally inviting viewers to submit idioms, or even using polls and community-submitted video clips. These are small changes which don’t displace the frame but have potential to invite shared participation.
Fawns (2022) informs us that learning is not just content delivery… it’s a choreography of technology, context, and humanity. Currently, most EdTech providers, including YouTube, operate within a paradigm that prioritizes a high return on investment which values consistency, clickability, and charisma instead of collaboration, care, or creative risk.
As far as I am concerned, it is not about table flipping; it is more about table balancing. Rewarding only structure means silence for countless individuals who dwell and thrive in the liminal spaces.
References
Ahn, J. (2020). Designing for learning equity: The role of agency and power in learning experience design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(5), 2713–2731. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-020-09785-0
Fawns, T. (2022). An entangled pedagogy: Looking beyond the pedagogy…technology dichotomy. Postdigital Science and Education, 4, 711–728. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7
Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: Notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), 65–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00338.x