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Why is it so important to make learning “brain-friendly“? Today more than ever, understanding what the “secrets” of effective and “memorable” training are is crucial for those in Corporate Training (not only, obviously).
In this post, we’ll explore the good rules, which can help us to plan and build training contents that are truly effective and able to lead to a “long-term” learning.
Premise: we live constantly connected.
Everyday, we’re bombed by a continuously increasing amount of information, and our smartphone is literally full of notifications – from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Amazon; notifications from e-mail (personal and business), CRM, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Netflix…WOAH?
Yep, we live constantly connected and the attention span of our brain is seriously challenged, as is our memory. Throughout this “digital noise”, how can we build a modern training that is brain-friendly? ?
In order to answer this question, we have to go back to the basics…to the Alphabet of Training!
Let’s start from the letter “L”.
Ha! We thank Giorgione, for inspiring us with his cooking alphabet. ?
L as Link, that is Connection!
Learning something new is hard! We can listen or read, but there won’t be any learning, if there is nothing that remains imprinted.
The secret? Warming up the right set of brain cells, so that they are ready to receive new information. Because that’s how our brain works! Yup: when we learn, our brain is literally trying to connect its cells.
Therefore, it’s essential to create a connection (Link ?) between new information and what our Learners already know. It’s pretty much like doing a leg warm up before a run, even though this time we’re not preparing for the Olympic marathon, but we’re setting up a specific area of our brain for successfully receiving new information.
In a nutshell, it’s crucial to do a preliminary work-out to make learning easier.
How to do that? Take a wild guess!
It has been proven that “guessing” can be a great way to help our brains make connections. Starting with a question – that can bring our Learners into the heart of the topic – is an incredible cognitive enabler. During this phase, giving the right answer is not essential, since the goal is allowing our Learners to connect to the topic of the course, in order to encourage their ability to remember the right answer – giving him feedback on it right away.
But it’s not just that.
What do you think? How would you deal with that?
An equally efficient “technique of brain warm-up” (to kindly invite our Learners’ brain cells to connect ?) consists in asking for their opinion, asking them how they would act in a given situation.
To sum up, placing people at the center of training, using – for instance – surveys or simulations, is a truly effective technique of “cognitive enabling”.
Possibilities are countless.
We can bring our Learners into the heart of the topic directly or through analogies and metaphors…Aesop’s tales can teach us a lot about it! Despite which path we choose to take, the goal is always the same: creating a brain-friendly training.
Until the next letter of the Training Alphabet!
#neverstoplearning
