Bad Courses and Programs Quietly Gaslight You
You’ve just taken an online course, a live workshop, or even a longer program. Part of this course included doing exercises. Now you’re at your job, and you’re trying to put this knowledge into use. You realize you’re not really sure what to do. Where do I start? How do I make decisions? How do I know if I’m doing this right? If I follow the template they gave me, is that good enough? Can I use a template incorrectly?
You start to think there must be something wrong with you. You’re not smart enough. You’re bad at this. You spent that time and or money at that course, and now you don’t even know what to do. You’re pretty sure the problem is you. You have to be the problem, right? You took a course, workshop, or program from that famous company or person you respect. Now that you’re putting that knowledge to use, why do you feel lost or confused?
In short, you have been quietly gaslit to believe that the problem was you, but it’s the bad course, the bad instructor, or both.
We often say in UX that the problem isn’t the user. It’s the system.
The same is true here. Consider whether the pedagogy set you up for success or failure. Pedagogy simply means how the course or program was constructed. What was it teaching? How did it teach concepts or techniques? Did the information make sense, especially to someone with your level of knowledge or skill?
What did the instructor contribute during sessions? Were they the type of person who came across as accessible? Someone you could ask questions to or even challenge? Or did you find that the instructor used terms you didn’t fully understand, but you didn’t feel comfortable asking them to stop and explain those?
Here again, we have the potential for gaslighting. Someone might say this is your fault. You should have asked those questions. I can see that. But some instructors don’t have a vibe that says they welcome questions or interruptions. I would also suggest that a good instructor wouldn’t use terms that some or all of the audience didn’t know. A good instructor would understand the level of knowledge and skill the attendees have, and adjust the content and lessons for them. For example, a good instructor wouldn’t tell you to do “desk research” without explaining what desk research is — and what it looks like to do it well or poorly — so that you can be set up for success.
Part of the pedagogy is the exercises or assignments.
Are these clearly defined? Are they good exercises for the level of skill you have now? For example, a good starter exercise might relate to eCommerce or common in-store experiences versus an exercise around trying to prevent someone’s second heart attack. While these might both be valid exercises, one might be a better fit for the newbie.
Exercises are a key area in a course where I find people are set up for failure. In many cases, to prioritize their time over your learning, an instructor might only look at your exercise or project at or toward the end of the program. If you’ve been making mistakes at multiple steps along the way, you will not know that until the instructor gives you the feedback you thought you were paying for. And by then, it might be too late to fix your mistakes.
I have seen this in nearly every course I have signed up for. The course is hours or days, possibly even weeks. But you won’t know if your work is headed in the right direction or if you’re getting anything right until quite late in the course. This is poor pedagogy, and can work against your ability to develop the skill you signed up to learn.
“Think Out Loud” when teaching.
In addition to getting little or no timely feedback on your work, another example of poor pedagogy in exercises is when the instructor doesn’t do what I like to call a Think Out Loud approach.
I have signed up for courses that have presented things like, “Here’s some sample data we might start with, and here’s the service blueprint we made. Now you try it.” I’m absolutely overpaying to guess at a service blueprint that instructors may or may not review thoroughly or promptly.
When will instructors show me how they went from that data to the service blueprint? I want to know how they did it. What steps they took, decisions they made, things they started doing but then decided against, something they did and felt good about but then changed later, where they collaborated with others, etc. There’s so much that I can learn from watching someone do something while Thinking Out Loud, but so far, I haven’t seen that technique used in any of the courses I’ve been in. They have all been, “Here’s A. Here’s Z. Now you try it.” Or, “Here’s a template. Now fill it in with your guesses and assumptions.”
The bad pedagogy of only scratching the surface.
A common problem we see in courses and programs is where the material promises that you will truly learn a skill or become “job-ready,” but they only scratch the surface. Sometimes instructors are honest, mentioning that this is just the very basics of this material, and you will need to continue learning to become decent at this skill. Sometimes they are not honest, and act like this is all you need to know.
A common example is qualitative research with target audiences. UX bootcamps, courses taught by “experts,” and Product Management certificates might present themselves as if this is all you need to be good or great at qual research. But instructors and programs rarely go into depth on how to do any of the following really well:
- Planning research. Selecting the best methods based on research goals and the questions we need to answer. Creating the discussion guide: the questions you will ask participants, and the tasks you want to observe.
- Recruiting the right participants for the study and methods you have chosen. Writing and disseminating screener surveys.
- Moderation and interviewing styles. Avoiding leading questions, questions that ask more than one question, or using body language or tones of voice that can bias the participant.
- How to observe people and what they are doing to pick up the types of things a detective would pick up. There is data in what you see, no matter what the user says.
- Analyzing and synthesizing the sessions. Coding, tagging, and looking for patterns and themes.
- Arriving on actionable insights. Problem statements. Strategic suggestions and priorities.
- Doing all of this without being colored by your biases, hopes, preferences, or hypotheses.
A poor course might teach that you write down a few questions you’re curious about, go into a coffee shop, find some adults, and ask them these questions. Or call a few customers and ask what our product is missing and what features they need. We could call this “research,” but it’s not good research. Perhaps it’s some sort of market research at a surface level.
If a job ever expected you to do anything in the above-bulleted list correctly, you would be lost.
Let’s not mistake these for good pedagogy or instructors.
It’s OK to say, “I took a shitty course.” It’s OK to say, “I took an interesting course, but the instructor was bad and I really didn’t learn what I intended to learn.”
It’s OK to tell yourself the truth. You might decide to share these concerns or your disappointment, and tell others your truth.
But it can be hard to recognize this while it’s happening. You’re excited about the program. You’re excited about the instructor or company, and you want to believe that you will get the skills that you were promised. You probably got a certificate or certification, so when you feel stuck when trying these skills on your own, you think the problem must be you.
Screenshot everything.
Take screenshots of the program’s website and marketing materials. What exactly were you promised? It’s important to be clear on what you’re being promised because, unfortunately, too many companies will write text designed to deceive you.
For example, I recently saw a boot camp claim that one of its selling points is “100% placement support.” What did your brain register when you saw that? You might see “100% placement,” and assume that everybody who takes this course is placed in a job. You might imagine that the school has a very fair job guarantee, and you will get your money back if you can’t find a job in a certain amount of time.
But look more closely. The 100% is probably not related to the word “placement.” It’s probably related to the word “support.” They are promising you “100% support” related to your efforts to get a job. But what does that mean? What does that look like? If they say motivational things to you, but give you no other assistance, is that still “100% support”? Maybe it is.
I don’t believe that this was written accidentally. I don’t believe that this is a mistake. I believe this was deliberately written to make you perceive something that wasn’t there, while in the future, allowing the school to correctly say that they never promised you a job; they promised to be supportive.
Now that you have taken screenshots of the website and marketing materials, and you have taken the time to read them carefully, use critical thinking and closely check what you are being promised. When you take the course you will need to frequently ask yourself, “Am I getting what I was promised?”
I once signed up for a two-day NNg course. When the instructor first put the agenda up at the beginning of the first day, I could see that it didn’t match what the website said the course would teach. They had removed most of the key areas I was taking the course to learn. I hung around the course for a while, but then realized I would not learn what I paid to learn. I emailed NNg, and told them that the course description did not match the agenda, and that I would like a refund. They issued me a refund immediately.
Of course, this is the right thing to do if your course does not follow through on the promises the marketing materials made. But I haven’t always been so fortunate. I posted to LinkedIn about an extremely negative situation I had with the Service Design Network.
The instructors were poor. The course was poor. The course did not follow through on what the website promised. The exercises were filling in templates, and the instructors didn’t plan to look at your work until the end. When I brought this to their attention, they did not want to give me a refund but they made me some strange offers like “free” tickets to their conference. They also appeared to offer me the certificate I would get upon completing the course even if I dropped out. This didn’t appear to be ethical. This can certainly devalue this certificate if more people knew about this, or knew about the low-quality course that probably awards everybody a certificate.
I could not get my money back even though I disputed the charge with my credit card company because Service Design Network’s terms and conditions say that there are no refunds under any condition. The credit card company claimed their hands were tied. Even though they believed my story, they could not issue me a refund because I was technically not entitled to one.
This course could have sold itself as “service design for beginners,” taught me nothing other than how to make a mediocre Thai curry, and I would still not be able to get my money back because of a “no refunds” policy.
Credit cards should look beyond a “no refunds” policy when the problem is bait-and-switch or “this is significantly not as it was described and promised.”
Did work pay for it? Now they expect you to have these skills.
You might not care that there are no refunds because your work paid for it, and they will be out the money. But you still might not have the knowledge or skills you expected to have. What might make that worse is if your company now expects you to be able to have those skills and perform that task.
Here we are back to the beginning of the story article, where you’re unsure what to do. You took a course, you went through a program, and you still don’t know how to do the work. The instructors gave you some pretend data to work from, but now you don’t have that data. How do you get that data? Did they explain good and bad data? Do they explain how to know you’re starting with the wrong data? Are you set up for success at any step of this process, task, or skill?
What can we do in these situations?
Whether I paid for this out of my pocket, or the company gave it to me as part of my professional development, I would say something to my manager. They need to know you might not be ready to do this skill or technique. Make sure the manager knows why this training was inadequate so that they don’t bother sending anybody else for it. You might need to find another training or course to take instead. And your manager might want to fight to get the company’s money back.
I would say something to the company who provided the training, and I would say it as soon as possible. Note that a response from the trainer might include further gaslighting. Service Design Network never intended to give me a refund, but when I complained, they pretended that if only I had complained earlier and in a different format, maybe they would have given me a refund. The message is: this is my fault.
They pretended they wanted to solve my problem, but everything they offered didn’t solve anything off my long list of complaints. Remember that just because somebody offers you a solution or tries to negotiate with you doesn’t mean that it is a real solution or that it solves your problem. You are welcome to decline these offers and let people know that these do not solve your problem, if that is the case.
Look for gaslighting in courses, programs, training, and instructors. It’s unfortunately too common. It’s not you. It’s them.
