Brain is our primary tool for learning. It's seat of thought, memory, consciousness and emotion. By matching your eLearning design with how the learner's brain functions you'll be able to create better courses. Brain-friendly learning is made up of building blocks that will help learners understand information deeply and retain it in their long-term memory.
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Neuroscience-based Elearning Tips- eBook Final Final
Brain is our primary tool for learning. It's seat of thought, memory, consciousness and emotion. By matching your eLearning design with how the learner's brain functions you'll be able to create better courses. Brain-friendly learning is made up of building blocks that will help learners understand information deeply and retain it in their long-term memory.
Brain is our primary tool for learning. It's seat of thought, memory, consciousness and emotion. By matching your eLearning design with how the learner's brain functions you'll be able to create better courses. Brain-friendly learning is made up of building blocks that will help learners understand information deeply and retain it in their long-term memory.
Aura Interactiva, creators of SHIFT eLearning. Shes focused on blogging and social media communications in the eLearning industry. Neuroscience-based eLearning Tips By: Karla Gutirrez Connect with her in LinkedIn here. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Author Page About this eBook 4 Tip 1: Important stuff comes first 7 Tip 2: Encourage consistent practice 9 Tip 3: Introduce novelty 11 Tip 4: Create multi-sensory learning experiences 13 Tip 5: Favor recognition over recall 15 Tip 6: Break your content into bite-sized chunks 17 Tip 7: Help learners access previous knowledge 19 Tip 8: Try more contrast 21 Tip 9: Enhance the relevancy of learning 24 Tip 10: The spacing effect 26 Tip 11: Trigger the right emotion 29 Tip 12: Balance emotion and cognition 31 Table of Contents About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com About this eBook The brain is our primary tool for learning. It's seat of thought, memory, consciousness and emotion. So it only makes sense to match your eLearning design with how the learners brain functions. By following this approach youll be able to create better courses that work with the brain and not contradict it. Remember, you cannot argue with your brain. It follows its own rules. You can force it to do things, say reading a tedious book on a technical subject, but thats going to be a big challenge. For optimal learning, what your learners need most is brain-friendly content.
The good news is, brain-friendly learning is no rocket science. Its made up of building blocks that will help learners understand information deeply and retain it in their long-term memory. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com This eBook will help you understand the essentials of how the adult brain learns. It looks at key principles from neuroscience research paired with tips that will allow course creators to achieve effective eLearning development.
Youll discover that when you design with the brain in mind youll are able to create better learning experiences.
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Neuroscience-based eLearning Tips Important stuff comes first Tip 1 Organization and sequencing of content is a key task in instructional planning. Why? Well, because the sequence of the subjects students learn directly affects how they process, store and recall information.
Readers ability to focus and retain information is lower in the middle. But their attention and retention are highest in the beginning and end. People also tend to scan the first and the last itemsinformation which are likely to stay in their short-term memory. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com In response to this, we highly recommended using the funnel approach. A funnel is wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. It's an apt metaphor for an effective learning approach, that is, from general to specific. It helps students recall or retrieve information more effectively by logically presenting data in a less intimidating and in a more friendly way. Most important data Supporting details Related info
The bottom-line: order content in such a way that the most important and general concepts are shown first. Structure your screens placing important information at the top (What's in for them?), then supporting it with the sentences that follow. John Medina, author of the book Brain Rules, explains this clearly: You have to do the general idea first. And then you will see a 40% increase in understanding. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Encourage consistent practice Tip 2 Cells that fire together, wire together. This phrase explains the use-it-or-lose-it phenomenon. Or to put it simply, if you want learners to retain new information, they have to use it constantly or else theyll lose it. When they stop practicing a new skill or a new language, for instance, the brain will eventually prune or eliminate certain pathways. Theyll eventually lose a new skill unless they keep on practicing. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com To help students retain new information, let them understand that only practices makes perfect. This means two things. One, that they need to practice constantly. And two, that it has to be a perfect practice. Learners have to take practice seriously so that they can build a stronger, more efficient and more hard-wired connections in the brain. Recommended Read: Why Actually Practices Makes Perfect (A complete and very graphical Explanation) About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Introduce novelty every 10-15 minutes Tip 3 The common assumption is that during any lecture or eLearning program, attention is greatest in the first 10-15 minutes and then wanes as the learner becomes tired of concentrating. Studies show, however, that attention is at its highest when the instructor introduces something novel such as humor or a visual aid into the presentation, thus breaking predicted behavior. This element of change, ideally involving some sort of interactive feature, is essential in an eLearning environment.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Introduce novelty every 10-15 minutes Experts in neuroscience strongly back this. They confirm that the brain pays more attention to whats new or different. Thats because our brain is hardwired for it. It ignores anything that's predictable, repetitive, old or just plain boring
Heres the tip: Introduce a novel element around every 10-15 minutes. Such novelty works best if you appeal to all three learning modalities, namely auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.
Employ this concept in eLearning design by: Adding a fresh and clear example. Presenting new data or shocking statistics. Using games and simulations to learn a new concept rather than text. Adding animation to explain a process instead of flow chart. Providing space for online discussions and debates. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 4 Create a multi-sensory learning experience If you want to create a vivid and lasting memory, then make sure that memory is created in a multi-faceted way. Many of us are visual learners but that doesnt mean that senses other than our sight are less important. Its quite the opposite. Students learn best when all their senses are engaged, when their imagination is most active. In fact, experts confirm that presentation methods which use two or more senses are more effective than using one sense only. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Support multi-sensory learning Help learners create strong and lasting memories by making them imagine colors, hear sounds, and experience emotions. Describe a face or a place in detail instead of giving them generalities.
Dont forget the hierarchy of how we learn best: by reading (10%) by hearing (20%) by seeing (30%) both by seeing and hearing (50%) by discussing with others (70%) by experiencing directly or personally (80%) by teaching someone else (95%)
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 5 Favor recognition over recall There are two different types of memory: recognition and recall. Recall requires full mental activity and is taxing on the memory, while recognition involves a much lower level of conscious effort. Effective eLearning development is often achieved when designers favor recall.
Humans aren't good at remembering things, so courses should be designed with this in mind. Clarity, familiarity, and consistency should all be common goals as you design your courses.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Favor recognition over recall There are certain design elements across an interface that should always stay the same. This way, learners aren't spending more time trying to remember what an icon represents, or how to navigate from one page or section of a course to another, than they do engaging in learning the material.
Providing a menu in a prominent place for easy access, guidance, and navigation tips. Providing visual cues and imagery to aid memory. Consistency can be achieved through a wide possible range of things such as: Using headings, lists, and prompts to assist the learner. Using colors, positioning, size, shape, labelling and language consistently. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 6 Break your content into Bite-sized chunks Chunking is the term and the concept to remember. A variety of research could be summarized by saying that short-term memory has a capacity of about "seven plus-or-minus two" chunks. Just as trying to carry too many things at one time can cause you to drop something, requiring learners to grasp too many concepts or attempt too many tasks at one time can cause them to "drop" that information. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com In short, the chunking technique makes learning more manageable and easier to integrate into long-term memory. Once its in long-term memory learners can remember it and transfer the knowledge to their daily tasks.
The takeaway is that you should pay attention to how much information the learner is accessing at any one time. More specifically:
Keep your paragraphs short and your sentences simple (online readers tend to skip large blocks of text.) Organize content into a scannable and easily digestible form (use lists for example). This discourages distraction and help readers make sense of your content quickly. Stick to the 7+/- 2 rule in deciding the number of chunks per screen or module.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 7 Help learners access previous knowledge Learning is a process based on associations. Cognitive scientists have shown that its all about connecting the dots. Learners organize, store and retrieve content. And they relate old data to new one.
Moreover, studies reveal that "creating associations between concepts can increase our ability to remember details by as much as 40%." All this explains why prior knowledge is crucial to the learning process.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com As a course developer, you can help learners access their previous knowledge and use it to draw new conclusions or patterns or combinations. Help them locate salient points, help them understand information (not just consume it) and use it more flexibly. If learners can connect new information to information they already have stored, then it will be easier for content to stick.
The main takeaway for eLearning is this: Move from the known to the unknown. Always begin with what the learners already know. This means you first need to know what your learner knows or doesn't know in order to shape your content.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 8 Try more contrast Are there any elements here that are in contrast to things that came before? The human brain asks this question on a regular basis. Its hardwired to look for contrast as if its survival depends on it.
Also known as the isolation effect, the von Restorff effect explains how we remember things that stand out. Humans, von Restorff tells us, pay more attention to things that are noticeable unfamiliar, different or unusual. Something markedly odd, say a red-colored word in a list of five items, will be more memorable. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Let's say you're writing a shopping list of ten items. Nine items are written in blue and the remaining one is written in red. If you're asked to memorize the list, which item do you think you'll remember best? The red one definitely, that's no-brainer. That's contrast at work.
In response to this, the psychologist-pediatrician von Restorff suggest to style elements in the middle differently to make them memorable.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Heres another tip: use contrast to organize elements on the screen. This will help you pull the learners' eyes to the content and to enable learners to distinguish various types of content. Start with color and size: Use large fonts for headlines. Use contrasting colors for headings to set them apart from black text. Bold or italicize other content you want to stand out. Use a different color for emphasis or content you wish to standout.
Other ideas: Use images that stand apart from chunks of paragraphs or lines of texts. If images are too common, try audio or video. Challenge a traditional format and be creative. Something atypical yet well- implemented works. Also add spaces and shapes to contrast with blocks of text. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 9 The relevancy of a course should become obvious within the first five minutes by showing learners that it will address their concerns. The reason for this is that relevance plays a crucial role in cognition. When information is perceived as relevant, cognitive efforts significantly decrease, leading to much higher cognitive effects. In contrast, when facts and data have no relevance to a learners life, it makes it more difficult to form a connection in the mind. Caine and Caine (1991) explained it clearly: "the greater the extent to which what we learn is tied to personal, meaningful experiences, the greater and deeper our learning will be.
Enhance the relevancy of learning About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com It is not that people remember meaningful material better, the forgetting function is the same; rather, people remember more meaningful material because they learn more of it initially
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com -- Unkown Tip 10 The Spacing Effect In 1885, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus found that people forget a whopping 80% of material they recently learned within 24 hours. This discovery led him to the so-called "Forgetting Curve." Ebbinghaus' remarkable body of research on learning and forgetting, which is still applicable today, showed us that: It's much harder to retain meaningless information. It's much easier to re-learn material than the first time. Learners will experience great success by spreading out their study sessions over time, not by engaging in one-night cram sessions.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com In contrast to crammed learning, spaced learning takes place over an extended period of time. The latter is definitely superior to crammed learning because the brain needs ample time to take in and fully understand new facts before it can accept the next group of information. Space learning, without a doubt, helps learners retain new material longer. At the core of it is the belief that real learning doesn't usually happen in one-time eventsthat it takes place over time. Here's how you can put it in practice: Focus on Longer Spacings: The spacing effect doesn't merely advocate repetitions of the same concept. It actually talks about spaced repetitions over time. And studies have found that longer spacings are more effective in terms of long-term retention. Longer means long enough to allow students to rest and absorb informationbut not too long for them to forget their lessons completely.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Vary Your Repetitions: Contrary to what you may think, repetition doesn't need to be tedious. You can review information through knowledge checks as a form of repetition. Using the theory, going over the same information or set of ideas, at spaced intervals, can help you create strong firing patterns in the brain and thus allow them to be saved in the student's long-term memory.
This way, you don't have to adhere to the same type of learning activity. That will only bore students. Repetitions can be presented through different learning media (text, audio, video, images, charts, etc).
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 11 Trigger the right emotion Learning isnt merely cerebral. Its emotional, too. In fact, emotion is the brains secret language. When you trigger an emotion, the brain decides, the body follows. Researchers, have confirmed how emotions affect mental processes. They even encourage instructional designers to include positive emotions as an important learning factor. Its simple, really. Students learn if they care. They pay attention if they feel encouraged. They engage with others if they feel welcomed. Emotions, therefore, are too entrenched in the learning processes that you cant ignore them and pretend theyre not important. Basically, where emotion is involved, the effect upon learning is drastically intensified.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com John Medina, in his book Brain Rules talks about the role of emotion on the human brain: "Emotionally charged events persist much longer in our memories and are recalled with greater accuracy than neutral memories.
So trigger the right emotion and use it to help students learn better and complete the eLearning course. Heres how. Typography: Typography, especially clean clear and simple fonts, projects certain emotions such as consistency, trust and confidence. Besides typography, consider the size and color of texts. These also affect the emotional and psychological response of your learners. Choose colors wisely: The right colors can help students improve their learning by as much as 75 percent, and their participation by as much as 80 percent. Use powerful images: You have to be careful in selecting the right image to fuel a particular mood. Images, then, make people feel something about your content. They can either discourage or motivate them, distract them or help them focus. About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com Tip 12 Balance Emotion and Cognition As the brain is both rational and emotional, it is important for course designers to create a balance between the two elements for effective eLearning development. Neurological studies have found that the limbic system, which is central for processing emotional reactions, shuts down when emotions run too high. In addition, a person whose rational center of emotional input is damaged, such as through trauma or injury, will struggle to make rational decisions; therefore, too little emotion also affects reasoning. These two examples demonstrate why a balance is so important to enable the brain to function properly and therefore allow knowledge to pass into long-term memory.
About us: Share this eBook! www.shiftelearning.com References: Want to study brain-based learning even further? Check all our sources here:
Novelty and testing: When the brain learns and why it forgets
Media characteristics and online learning technology
Winning the battle for students attention 10 minutes at a time
Why practice actually makes perfect: How to rewire your brain for better performance
Does practice make perfect?
Reporting what students are learning: How emotions affect learning
Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: Evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression The forgetting curve and its implications for training delivery
Memory Recall / Retrieval
The Funnel Writing Method
Emotions an their effect on adult learning: A constructivist perspective
Brain based learning
How can research on the brain inform education?
The science of learning: Best approaches for your brain
Science shows making lessons relevant really matters
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