Optimising online learning

People learn most from the activities that ask the most from the brain. The more senses are involved, the more attention can be given to the topic, the more effective the learning will be. So if we want people to pick up what you have to offer, we need to apply the most effective learning methods.

If you hear that your favourite movie actor has been in your home town, that's a memory that will not last long. You might forget to repeat this to a fellow fan the day after. But if you were there and you saw the actor yourself, you would definitely be able to recount the story later. If you talked to this person, you would hardly ever forget. Lastly, if you played a game of 2-on-2 basketball with this person, the memory would last for a lifetime.

Applying this to the classroom, we must continue with active exercises after having explained a new piece of knowledge. But the facilities we employ during a training often do not allow for much. Especially when the training is online, we

This can be explained through the levels from the model of Bloom, published in 1956 and upgraded afterwards. At the bottom level we see the most basic type of learning; information is offered and this can be remembered if the learner pays attention. The material can be verbal or written. It could be the fact that the gravitational pull we experience on the surface of the Earth is 9,8 m/s*s. On the moon it's 1,6 m/s*s. Trying to remember that outside from other context can be quite hard.

Some people say "I don't learn well when I just have to remember, I learn better when I can understand WHY a certain fact is so." Gravity pulls at us at us. Why? Because matter attracts matter and the moon is much smaller so there is less material to pull at you. You can now understand why astronauts jumped so much higher at the moon. You may now also understand that you have an infinitesimally small pull on the Earth as well.

We put exercises in between pieces of knowledge in text books so that people can go and apply the theory. This is done so that you can now apply the knowledge to remember it better. If you were ever to work for a space agency and you need to calculate the weight of a new moon structure so we know how strong the foundation must be, you can now already perform a calculation with the learned facts to do so. Application also has a secondary benefit; you reactivate the brain around this knowledge which reinforces it. Knowledge you never apply is quickly lost. Try remembering a foreign language you learned at school and never applied. You might not remember much. If you can reconstruct the classroom, especially including its smell, you might remember more because your olfactory senses produce the strongest memories.

The other three levels (analyse, evaluate, create) are all further factors for learning, all because they make the learner interact intensely with the material and activate the brain further. So the more complex the exercise, the better the result.

So when we create online or computer based learning programs, we should maximise involvement of the senses and of higher brain functions. For instance; design your own moon base with the knowledge of gravity and other scientific facts, in a team so that you have to communicate and explain your ideas with your team members. A learning system would need functions for people interact with each other (audio and video communication if online), to write, draw and design, optionally record voice and video so that the learners can deliver their results for evaulation, with functions for the teaching facilitators to review and grade the results.