What science knows for sure about how the brain learns and what you need to do about it
After a couple of months of online classes last year, my 16-year-old daughter started to call school “computer jail”. She dreaded sitting down in front of her computer all-day trapped in her room listening to her teachers. Like all of us, she has a natural love of learning. Just not that way. COVID has sparked a lot of discussion about how to make online learning more engaging.
But in order to answer this we must ask a deeper question first:
How do we learn?
Sounds simple. But traditional education is riddled with practices that seem to be grounded in the exact opposite of what we know about how the brain learns. Like teaching a fish to climb a tree, as Albert Einstein once wrote.
Brain Rules is a book by molecular biologist John Medina. In it, he shares 12 “Brain Rules” stemming from what scientists know for sure about how our brains work.
It is written for non-scientists like me packed with lots of hilarious stories and concrete examples.
And he includes just enough explanation about the difference between areas of the brain like the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus to grasp basic neuroscience.
In the book, there are a lot of surprising facts about the way the brain works with big implications about how we design learning.
One of the most surprising facts is that the book was first published in 2008. And kids are still sitting at desks, tired, stressed, and bored.
As learning designers, what do we need to know about how the brain learns to design the very best learning experiences for our groups?
I’ve summarized each of the brain rules with a design takeaway.
Read on.
The 12 Brain Rules
The human brain is designed to solve problems related to surviving, in an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. Our brains evolved thousands of years ago when we were living in the savannah in Africa fending off danger and vying for our survival. We were in motion, constantly solving problems through exploration. Our ability to use symbolic reasoning, or making things up is what separates us from the gorillas. For survival, we needed to understand one another’s intentions and motivations. This allowed us to coordinate within a group, our mightiest survival strategy.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Our brains learn in dynamic, responsive ways collaborating with others using our problem-solving skills. No to passive learning. Yes to experiential learning.
Exercise boosts brainpower. Our evolutionary ancestors were used to walking up to 12 miles per day. They were not sitting in a classroom or in front of a desk for 8 hours at a time. Movement stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting. It boosts problem-solving and creativity. In other words, physical activity is cognitive candy.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: To learn better we need to move. Movement before and during learning enhances learning. Less sitting more moving.
Sleep well, think well. About 10% of us are larks (morning people) being most productive in the morning hours. Another 10% of us are owls (night hawks). The rest of us are hummingbirds, or somewhere in between. While asleep, your brain appears to replay what you learned that day. Sleep loss cripples thinking in just about every way you can measure thinking.
💡Design takeaway: Design activities so that people can learn when they are most awake. You can also learn to gauge the energy of your group. You can use energizers to increase the group’s energy when is low. You can use focus exercises to bring the group’s energy down when it is high.
Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. Some stress boosts learning. Chronic stress cripples it. Stress impacts problem-solving, self-control, concentration, and memory. Traditional education has become pretty skilled at generating additional stress through high-stakes exams. Stress often comes from life outside school as well. When ignored the students who need support the most end up losing out on learning. This compounds inequity in education.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: When designing learning, take into account factors outside of the session that can impact learning. Weave in activities that acknowledge and welcome emotions into the learning experience.
Every brain is wired differently. No two people learn alike. We have a great number of ways of being intelligent, many of which don’t show up on IQ tests. Learning needs to be designed for multiple learning styles.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: When designing learning, combine a range of activities to appeal to different learning styles.
We don’t pay attention to boring things. Marketers have figured this out. TikTok has figured this out. Education has not. Better attention always equals better learning. We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. Emotions and meaning get our attention and help us learn. People start to check out after 10 minutes. Optimal learning happens with less information and more time to connect the dots.
💡Design takeaway: Medina gives us a formula for designing learning. Divide learning into 10-minute segments. Each segment should cover only 1 core concept. The first minute should be dedicated to explaining the core concept. Then go into detail. In between segments tell a relevant story or joke to carry your learners’ attention over to the next segment.
Repeat to remember. Medina reveals what he calls one of the most depressing facts in all of education: People usually forget 90% of what they learn in-class within 30 days. And the majority of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class. To boost learning we need to use real-world examples. The more, the better. Medina also says what happens in the initial moments of learning is crucial. Like the opening sequence of a James Bond movie, the first 30 seconds are crucial to holding or losing your learner’s attention.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Powerful initial moments, real-world examples, and environment enhance memory.
Stimulate more of the senses at the same time. Your brain receives information about an event through your senses. But it also seems to rely partly on past experience in deciding how to combine these signals. So two people can perceive the same event very differently. Just ask witnesses at a crime scene. Our senses evolved to work together. So you learn best if several senses are stimulated at the same time. Combining sound, sight, touch, and smell improves recall, problem-solving, and creativity.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Using the imagination in learning is a way of stimulating senses. You can describe concepts and ideas using different senses.
Vision trumps all other senses. Text and oral presentations are far less efficient than pictures for retaining certain types of information. It’s because our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures. It stips to ponder the individual features of each letter you read. Including visuals is the most effective way to “glue” information to a neuron.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Include colorful images, videos, or animation in presentations and teaching.
Music boosts cognition. Music stimulates many parts of our mental faculties. Studying music boosts listening, language skills, social skills. It is even found to make kids more empathetic.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: It appears that the benefits of learning music come from music classes, especially when kids are young. Facilitators I know are experimenting with body rhythm and song in group learning that has the effect of bonding the group.
Male and female brains are different. Men’s and women’s brains are different structurally and biochemically. Science does not know if those differences have significance. Complicating matters, even more, is trying to tease out what is nature, and what is nurture. In other words, how our social ecologies impact behavior and learning. One thing Medina does say is that the emotional lives of men and women are a big part of the job for teachers and managers. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention. Men and women process certain emotions differently, influenced by nature and nurture. When these differences are ignored, education can create inequality.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Emotions are key for learning. Open space to include emotions in the learning process.
We are powerful and natural explorers. Anyone who has been around small children knows first hand that our tendency to explore is strongest when we are young. But all hope is not lost when we grow up. We are also capable of turning into lifelong learners. That’s because some part of our adult brains stay as malleable as a baby’s so that we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives.
đź’ˇDesign takeaway: Learning is best when fueled by our natural curiosity. As learning designers, we can learn to ask more interesting questions and pose intriguing problems to solve.
As creators, facilitators, and teachers, COVID gives us an opportunity to re-make education and learning for all ages. Let’s re-design it in sync with the way our brains actually work.
Gwyn Wansbrough is a Creative Facilitator and Experience Designer based in Barcelona, Spain. She works with people and organizations around the world to create dynamic and empowering learning experiences online and in person. She writes about facilitation, creativity, and learning in a weekly newsletter called The Quest. Subscribe here or visit www.gwynwansbrough.com to learn more.
