Thursday, April 29, 2004

Tip #16: Accelerate learning!

If you would like to increase the probability that learners will learn faster and retain that learning longer, then you will want to incorporate accelerated learning techniques into your curriculum design.

Accelerated learning techniques create the ultimate participant-centered training experience. They draw on recent scientific research into the structure of the brain and individual learning preferences.

Accelerated learning is based on six key principles:

  1. Engage the participants in the learning process;

  2. Meet the needs of the different learning styles;

  3. Build on what the participants already know;

  4. Create a joyful, stress-free learning environment;

  5. Involve as many of the senses as possible; and

  6. Provide for increasingly deeper involvement in the learning process.

Four of these six principles have been discussed in previous Tips. We will address principles #4 and #6 separately in upcoming Tips.

Friday, April 23, 2004

Tip #15: Use metaphor to create meaning.

Meaning is one of the four properties of learning that Dr. Madeline Hunter of UCLA identified in her Mastery Teaching Model. According to George Lakoff in Metaphors We Live By: "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another." In other words, metaphor can give meaning to unfamiliar and/or complex technical information by explaining it in terms of more familiar and accessible situations or concepts.

Metaphors can be drawn from any shared human experience: family life, sports, games, movies, food, pets, cars, television, music, rites of passage, historical events, books, school, work, weather, childhood, travel, vacations, holidays, machines, nature, space, etc.

Metaphor redefines the program content as a set of concepts, processes, or relationships, and places it in an entirely different setting. For example, life can be viewed as a board game, an organization as a sailboat, and a rocky relationship as white water rafting.

In summary, metaphors create and/or build on common ground in order to establish and maintain a meaningful learning context.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Tip #14: Change the sequence for optimal learning.

The importance of shortening a sequence to avoid sequence interference problems was emphasized in Tip #13. In addition, it helps to change the sequence. The very beginning and ending of any training segment is most ripe for learning. Therefore, you may want to begin with the most difficult or complex 2-5 items or steps, when the participants are most ready to learn, and then teach the easier items. Or, in order to build the learners' confidence, you may want to start with the easiest items or steps, and end with the more difficult items. After the items or steps have been learned, they can be placed into their natural or necessary order for future practice and performance.

Sequence is one of the four properties of learning that Dr. Madeline Hunter of UCLA identified in her Mastery Teaching Model. The three other properties are meaning, previous practice, and relationship. They will be discussed in future Tips.

Saturday, April 3, 2004

Tip #13: Teach only a few things at a time.

Studies of how the brain works have shown that learners can absorb and retain a limited number of items or concepts at one time. When the items are meaningful and familiar to the learners, it is possible to cover 4-5 during one training segment. When the items are unfamiliar to the learner and therefore essentially "nonsense," because they lack sufficient meaning or context, it is only possible to cover 2-3 during one training segment. Therefore, if there are ten steps in a process or twenty items on a list, it will be necessary to break them down and teach them in manageable chunks of 4-5 items if they are meaningful and 2-3 items if they are new and unfamiliar. Please note that a training segment may be anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, depending upon the complexity of the items to be taught, the level of learning desired, and the type of learning activities used.

In Tip #14, we will look at the impact of sequence on learning and retention.