Learning should be beautiful

I love exploring historic universities. When I was living in London a few years ago, I had the chance to explore some of Oxford’s colleges and numerous universities in Scotland.

Walking into each felt like an invitation to learn. And that feeling is no accident. Educators have known for a long time that creating a beautiful place to learn helps people learn better. Beauty motivates us to learn before we even realize it.

Universities, for all their other faults, have taken advantage of this principle for centuries. In contrast, most LMS software is generic at best. Often, it’s ugly and distracting. LMSs tend to feel more like a functional tool than an immersive environment.

At Pathwright, we believe that a beautiful place to learn is even more important in the virtual world.

Here are four ways we believe beauty empowers learning:

1. Beauty captivates learners

Before your students click play on video lessons or read discussion questions, your brand attracts or repels them. Just like an Ivy League school’s crest speaks to a school’s reputation for learning, your branding can increase your legitimacy as an educator.

This reputation can’t be faked. Good branding grows from the inside out. Your brand should be a natural outpouring of your educational goals. What educator doesn’t believe strongly in their goals? Let your brand promote what you believe at your core. If it does, it won’t fail to draw in the right learners.

2. Beauty innervates content

Just as your educational philosophy deserves to be visualized well, so does your content.

Think back to when you bought textbooks in college. Virtually no one enjoys buying textbooks, because textbooks rarely reflect a passion to learn. They are often poorly bound and horribly laid out. And they’re never fun to read. Information piled on top of facts is not a good look.

Online lessons shouldn’t be that way. If your content is worth teaching, then it’s worth packaging well.

3. Beauty fosters identity

Students should be proud they’re learning with you.

Branding your school consistently and holistically will create this sense of identity. While a logo can help you accomplish this task, good branding requires more. Even simply providing a consistent color scheme will help your students invest themselves in who you are as an educator.

Good branding empowers your individual student’s identity without compromising your educational philosophy.

4. Beauty creates a place

You can probably think of restaurants or cafés that you revisit as much for the atmosphere as you do for the food. Websites and online schools can be the same. If your online educational platform is an attractive and comfortable environment, it will be one in which your students want to learn.

Creating a sense of place and purpose is essential for online educators. Most of your students will sit at a kitchen table or in a coffee shop as you teach them. Background noise, the day’s mundane tasks, and a thousand cat videos bombard your learners and compete with you for their attention.

Through good and beautiful design, your online courses can become a portal that transports learners away from these distractors. It can push them to want to learn and keep them coming back day after day.

At Pathwright, we believe education should be beautiful. We’ve designed every screen to be elegant and aesthetically appealing. Educators can generate a unique, atmospheric background around each course to captivate learners. With Pathwright, you can brand your online school’s experience so it feels like your unique place. Try it free today.