Birds on the Brain: Playtest New Learning Tools for Developing Unconscious Competence in Bird Identification

See that black bird? Is that a crow or a raven? And how can you tell? At the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, we’ve challenged ourselves to build an adaptive learning tool that speeds bird ID skill development by mimicking how birders build up their knowledge in the field. It combines the built-in human ability to form mental models with the power of millions of media assets and bird sightings from eBird—one of the world’s largest participatory science platforms. The big idea is that by exposing our brains to a series of image comparisons of bird species from different angles and lighting conditions, we are able to quickly build a mental model of the key characteristics that make that bird identifiable. This process happens both consciously and unconsciously and can feel almost magical. Our tool is under active development and we’d like to share our design principles and prototype with fellow Connected Learners. Come join us in a playtesting session where you’ll get a chance to build your own bird ID challenge and then play around to see if our approach works for you. In the process, let’s discuss the role of mental models and unconscious competence in learning. Your hosts are Mya Thompson, Jeff Szuc, and Noah Warnke, developers of the online course platform Bird Academy, as well as the educational games Flap to the Future, Bird Song Hero, and BeastBox.