Teaching and theorizing in psychology has long been torn between targeting general underlying principles by observing dynamics in the individual or focusing on average behavior. As dealing with group averages is common practice in psychology, it is important for students to understand how individual learning curves relate to group average curves. In two experiments, we explore whether posing questions about the individual time course of learning can help psychology students to generate valid representations of the average time course of learning. Attempting to foster learning as a generative process, we provided students in Experiment 1 (N = 83) with vignettes asking them to draw hypothetical learning curves of individuals vs. averages over individuals (order of vignettes varied as experimental manipulation) into an empty coordinate system (time on the x-axis, performance on the y-axis; fixed start and endpoints). However, students who worked on the individual-time-course vignette first did not draw better average curves than those undertaking the reverse order of tasks. Experiment 2 (N = 36) found tentative evidence that providing students with a metaphor (falling leaves) can guide attention towards the variability of individual time courses.