Making learners take ownership of their own learning
Daniel Thambyrajah
Society has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades with vast strides in technology and business. However, education and learning trends haven’t kept up, as we frequently realise.
Daniel (Danny) Ferdinandusz and Daniel Thambyrajah want to change the concept of traditional learning. They believe that “traditional learning heavily reliant on auditory and visual learning does not prioritise the learner and does not encourage questioning or developing analytical and critical thinking skills.” They believe in allowing the learners to become more involved and take ownership of their own learning.
It was this idea that led them to form ‘Snap Ark’ – an “unconventional movement of facilitators, programme designers and conversation specialists, providing technical and non-technical skills-training, leadership development, team building strategies and learning and development solutions for corporations, organisations and institutions.”
It is made up of five elements, which include experiential learning, unconventional learning, simplicity, authenticity and being disruptive. These aim at challenging the status quo, facilitating raw conversations and rethinking the normal.
The two have known each other for many years. Interestingly, Daniel had previously taught Danny at Sunday School. Danny went on to complete his Bachelor’s in law (LLB) under the University of London external degree programme.
He achieved First class honours and also bagged the World Prize for Public International Law and the Commonwealth Achievement Award. He also obtained the highest national aggregate for the LLB and was the Valedictorian of the programme’s graduating batch of 2018.
Throughout his university journey, Danny was focused on getting the process right, maintaining a balance between sports, music, theatre and work and constantly changing the way he studied. He believes that these steps helped him towards his achievements.
Daniel began his career as a waiter. Many jobs later, he was trained to become a facilitator and has been facilitating learning and development since 1998. He holds a Masters degree in aid and development and has a diploma in mass communication and is also a RFT Level 1 Fitness coach who runs his own fitness programme.
Daniel Ferdinandusz
Working in leadership roles, both in the private and social services sector, Daniel having been a facilitator for 20 years, felt there were areas he had got wrong and wanted to make a shift.
With Danny, he saw an opportunity to learn, change and develop new learning modules and conversations which were relatively new to Sri Lanka.
Completing his LLB, Danny was not keen to practise law, (although presently he lectures on the subject in Sri Lanka and the Maldives) but rather wanted to work at a place that “gave him more freedom to leverage his creative skills.” When he bumped into Daniel at church, a chance conversation led to him joining Daniel at his previous company.
Here, Danny was drawn to the subject of social development and learning and development. Enjoying the work, when things took an unfortunate turn at the company, both Danny and Daniel decided to branch out on their own.
Since its inception, Snap Ark has received plenty of positive feedback working with several well known companies and INGOs .
This, the team believes is owing to their novel approach and the learners finding it refreshing and exciting to learn in this manner. “Much of what we learn are through interpretations so it’s always good to explore knowledge with questions and think differently about the information that is available.”
This is just how Snap Ark designs their learning sessions. Every subject has a flipside and Snap Ark creates the space to have such discussions.
A key feature of the programmes offered by Snap Ark is that most of them are curated after a series of meetings and discussions held with company directors or learning and development managers. Here, Danny and Daniel dig deep into why the programme is being run, the objectives and the expected outcomes
Workshops are then planned according to the target learning group. It offers a little something for everyone and is heavily reliant on gamification, roleplay, simulation, activity and fun.
The sessions typically start with ice-breakers, activities and getting to know the group. Snap Ark also follows several experiential learning processes, where activities or games are followed by self-reflection, discussion, application and then of course story-telling and knowledge-sharing, on the basis that ‘learning happens best through play’.
Snap Ark is different, not for the sake of being different, but because Danny and Daniel firmly believe that a unique approach is needed to meet the learning needs of society today.
“From the moment you walk into our workshop, you’ll probably notice everything from the layout, to the colours, to the activities are different from the traditional training programme set up,” they say.
Dedicated and innovative: Snap Ark team. Pix courtesy Snap Ark
Snap Ark’s services are broken into three. Their Signature Module is a deep-dive into facilitation, where they help learners to become better facilitators and trainers. Their workshops cover both technical and non-technical skills development and are divided into indoor, outdoor and outbound segments with modules on Raw Leadership, Dealing with Unconscious Bias, Diversity and Inclusion, Leading with Improv, Design Thinking for Business, and Emotional Intelligence, to name a few.
Aside from these, Snap Ark also provides consultancy services on several key areas such as Learning Management Systems Development, E-learning development, course conversion and Design Thinking etc.
Moving forward, they hope to see Snap Ark “influencing more learning”. Both Danny and Daniel are also working towards branching out globally, and also with more corporates in Sri Lanka, who truly understand the importance of taking a new approach to learning and development. Danny hopes to introduce the importance of Design Thinking to more companies, while Daniel also dreams of producing movies one day!
Their hope with Snap Ark is that it would become a movement that influences people to question more, learn better, improvise and be more open to new ideas, doing things differently and constantly improving personally and as businesses.