Seven neuroscience backed-up facts for better learning experience design.

From trainers and learning experience designers to leaders, managers and even lifelong learners, we've tried to hack the learning process at least once in our lives. I have often asked myself these questions: What conditions need to be fulfilled for learning to happen? Why do we forget things we want to remember? Why do we remember things we never wanted to learn?

Many books, articles, podcasts and webinars later, here I am trying to make sense of it all. These ideas are not mine, they are a compilation of notes I took mainly and not exclusively by reading these four books:?

How we learn - Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine…for Now by Stanislas Dehaene;

How people Learn - Designing education and training that works to improve performance by Nick Shackleton-Jones;

Design for how people learn by Julie Dirksen;

Make it stick - The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roedinger III and Mark A. McDaniel.

I write this mainly for myself, but maybe someone out there is also looking for some science backed tips to defeat the unforgiving forgetting curve. Successful learning involves encoding (making sense of and remembering the information) and retrieval (access, manipulate, combine and use the information at a later stage). Sounds easy? It can be if you follow these couple of tips that neuroscience has gifted us with.?

01. Attention blinds us.

We are non-stop bombarded with stimuli from our environment. Our so called ‘sensory memory’ has one goal: to constantly scan, analyze and decide on which surrounding stimuli should our attention focus on.?When our brains hold onto this information or thoughts long enough for us to take some kind of action or make sense of it, it means that those stimuli have been passed into the ‘short-term memory’ or ‘working memory’. But paying attention requires brain resources and the brain can only sustain it that much. If the object of our focus is not considered meaningful and relevant for immediate success, applicability or own survival, the short-term memory will discard it and it won’t be stored into the ‘long-term memory’ for future retrieval and use. In other words, it will be forgotten.

Our attention is selective, slow and linear. Multiple studies show that our brains are incapable of multitasking and as soon as something has captured our focus, we become blind to other stimuli present around us. We process one piece of information at a time and cannot execute two different conscious mental models simultaneously. The only instance we are able to really engage in two different tasks at the same time is when one of them already became a habit and it is steered by the automatic and routine centre of our brain (the basal ganglia).

Anything that doesn’t capture our attention, does not exist.

Everything that happens around us is in constant competition to gain our attention. If a stimuli repeats itself over a longer a period of time, our brain is getting used to the stimuli to the point it no longer notices or responds to it (process called habituation). This means that repetition and consistency will most probably loose the battle for attention to novelty and unpredictability.?

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• Avoid unnecessary distractions (e.g. messy content, too much content, never ending discussion on one point, inconsistent image of the material etc).
• Chunk the theory and focus on key takeaways to avoid cognitive overload (less is more).
• Bring variety in slides and visuals, in your voice, in the content itself, in the activities and tools you are using (but don’t overdo it as variety itself might be distracting when too much and with no clear reason).
• Use visuals to explain abstract concepts or metaphors, to showcase and explain a process, to provide context.
• Take regular breaks and include movement into your training.
• Mind the training environment: go for a spacious room, natural daylight, the possibility to open windows during breaks, the right temperature etc.

02. Attention and the affective context model.

Think back to some of your best learning experiences. Chances are you remember those that piqued your interest, your curiosity, surprised or shocked you. Nick Shackleton-Jones talks about the affective context model underlying any learning experience. His point is simple: our brains are very efficient at eliminating rubbish and retaining only the information that makes sense to us. Human memory is all about meaning and the brain is learning by encoding our emotional responses to events. Our emotional state towards an event is sufficient to reconstruct that particular experience as a memory.?

This means we need to accept and account for the fact that no one is merely 'storing information' as a computer would. As people, we react to the events around us based on the meaning we attach to them, based on our past experience, our expectations, our concerns and motivations. If an event is irrelevant to us, we perceive is as boring or predictable, so it won’t leave much of an impression. But when we really care about something, we attach a personal meaning to that event, we ‘feel’ it, and that increases the likelihood of that event being remembered later on. That’s why two people attending the same learning experience will remember different things, based on what they care about and what interests them.?

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• Start with the “what’s in it for them” - make content relevant, relatable and concrete. If the learners don’t regard the learning content as important, they will not learn it and that’s a fact.
• Allow learners to bring their own challenges, projects or questions and focus the learning experience on how to solve these.?
• Ideally, design learning that can be used in the moment of need (just-in-time learning). If not possible, you need to create a sense of urgency and importance through interesting dilemmas, immediacy or constraints of resources. Scenarios, problem-solving or immersive games are great examples to create these conditions.?
• Designing immersive learning experience where learners can feel, touch, move, play and experiment while looking for a solution to a real-life problem.?
• Whenever possible, recreate the real-life emotional context where the learning needs to be applied later as accurately as possible during the learning experience (context for learning versus context for use).
• Make use of storytelling. Gordon Bower and Michael Clark found that converting a list of information into a story format improved memory for the information seven folds.
• Leverage emotions like surprise, curiosity or joy through storytelling, videos, examples, case studies, role-play, compelling scenarios or simulations.?
• Use images or stories to convey concepts that are too abstract and make them more tangible and relatable.?
• Use gamification to support engagement (prizes and rewards) but use them carefully as extrinsic motivators can damage learning on the long term. Ideally, use intrinsic rewards that motivate people (pride of a new capability, anticipation of being able to use the new skill).?

03. Curiosity, dopamine and learning.

Stanislas Dehaene argues that curiosity is not an effect of education, but a mechanism that precedes learning. We do not simply wait for knowledge to come to us, we are born with the drive to know, to seek novelty, to explore our environment and discover things we can learn. Every time our brain realizes that one of the assumptions we made about the world was wrong and we need to revise our mental models, our brain triggers further curiosity. And when we give into our curiosity and we drift in exploration and experimentation, our brain gets a much sought after prize: it activates our dopamine circuit, and this makes our appetite for learning deeply rewarding.?

Curiosity and memory are linked - the more curious you are about something, the more likely it is you will remember it.

Laughter or joy is one if the human emotions that seems to increase curiosity and thus enhance memory. To sustain learning, curiosity needs to lie between the boredom of what we already know, and the fear of the too complex.?

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• Don’t explain every concept into detail because learners might loose curiosity.
• Design learning experience where learners can actively generate hypothesis and testing them on the outside world.
• Use active engagement methods: practical activities, experiential learning, small group discussion, group work, peer teaching, solve a problem before given the result.
• Reward curiosity, encourage questions and initiative-taking, and allow space for experimentation and idea testing.

04. No surprise, no learning!

Learning is impossible without an error signal: ‘Organism only learn when events violate their expectations. The brain learns only if is perceives a gap between what it predicts and what it discovers as being true. When a predictions error is perceived, the brain corrects that error in the metal model used to make that prediction. Learning happens when we are surprised. (Robert Rescola and Alla Wagner).

The error signal we are talking about is an internal signal that travels in the brain, we do not need to make an actual error to learn. All we need is a discrepancy between what we expect and what we get. The error feedback should not be confused with punishment. Mistakes and errors are crucial for learning to happen and we need to nurture learners growth mindset which in turn will activate their attention and active engagement.

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• When?giving feedback, draw attention to learners' progress as well, encourage participation and reward efforts.?
• Design for surprise, unexpected conclusions or create dissonance.

When we learn a new skill, we activate the prefrontal cortex and we process the new information consciously, step by step, slowly. This requires brain resources like attention and active engagement effort. Through repetition and feedback, mental models are perfected and, as the new skill turns into routine, it also turns control from the prefrontal cortex to basal ganglia (the centre of automatic and routine behavior). This process is called consolidation and it is vital in freeing up resources for us to focus on and learn new things.?

“A passive organism does not learn" says Dehaene, and "without attention, effort and in-depth reflection, the lessons fade away without leaving much of a trace in the brain.”?

05. Deeper processing leads to faster learning.

The more you engage the learners and take them out of the comfort of passivity, the deeper they process the information you provide. Deeper processing leads to deeper traces left in learners' memory.?

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• Ask learners to answer a question or solve a problem before the answer is presented to them. The problem should be not too easy, and not too hard.?
• Ask thought-provoking questions, create room for healthy debate.
• Design for collaborative learning that requires negotiation, communication, support and other group dynamics. These require engagement and attention to master. (e.g. group discussion, sharing best practices, working out loud, peer coaching sessions).?
• Use experiential learning: 1. Create an experience or a simulation that unveils where the learners come up short in knowledge or skill. 2. Use reflection to help them make sense of this experience 3. Through elaboration, link this experience to real life situations.?
• Use problem-based learning.?
• Make use of elaboration, or finding additional layers of meaning to new material. Ask learners to explain what they learned in their own words to someone else, or explain how it relates to a problem in real life. You can use metaphors or visual representations to elaborate on concepts as well.
• Never miss an opportunity for reflection. Reflection moments connect new experiences with what learners already know and encourages them visualize and mentally rehearse what they would do differently next time.?

06. Spaced out learning and knowledge retrieval.

Numerous studies show that spacing out learning over increasingly large intervals is much more efficient than cramming information into one session. Why? Massed practice and re-reading a piece of information repeatedly gives learners the mere illusion of knowing because they access information that’s present in their short-term memory. As a result, their brain activity decreases since the material gradually loses its novelty and the brain habituates to the stimuli.?

On the other hand, retrieving knowledge from long-term memory requires mental effort and increases brain activity because it creates the effect of ‘desirable difficulty’. It pushes the relevant brain circuits to work more while retrieving the information from memory.

Effortful retrieval will strengthen the neural route that the brain will use in the future to recall that information.

Retrieving helps learners verify what they really know versus what they think they know (error feedback => surprise => better learning).?Spaced-out sessions allow for forgetting to settle in and the effortful retrieval leads to stronger long-term retention. The more you practice, the higher the chances of it becoming automated: you will eventually act without mental effort.

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:

• Design blended learning journeys and make sure you spread information over time.?
• Create the opportunity to apply the learned skills to different situations.?
• Ensure that the learners need to practice in the same way that they will need to perform in real-life situations.?
• Combine different learning methods to add complexity and make concepts clearer by comparison.
• Create opportunities for self-evaluation and checking own progress.?
• Harness the power of social learning and peer coaching as an alternative retrieval and reinforcement practice. Online forum, shared reflection, chat, discussion, debate etc.
• Peer and group discussions are more efficient retrieval methods than multiple choice tests or true/ false affirmations.
• Ask learners to explain concepts to their peers, or let them come up with the solution to a problem as a group.?
• Repeat and knit concepts from one course/ training session into new material you introduce later.
• Use project-based learning where learners can apply past learnings to new and relevant situations.
• Use email, video, e-learning to drip feed content (nudges) and convert abstract concepts into concrete actionable tips they can apply in the flow of work.

07. Alternating between topics makes learning stick.

This is a process called interleaving and it recommends us to switch through different topics before learners get the chance to master and polish any of them. This seems counter-intuitive, since school taught us to move on to the next lesson only when we know the current one. We are used to cover material in a linear way. Nevertheless, if we aim to take our learners beyond mere memorization to the higher levels of conceptual learning and practical application, a better strategy would be to first cover the basics, then come back and add the next complexity layer, then move on to the next one and so on until we have covered them all (scaffolding). Alternating between these topics requires learners to refresh their mind before the new layer of complexity is added.

For the learners, this might feel counterintuitive and random, but you are preparing them to overcome future difficulties in discerning the nature of a challenge and selecting among possible responses - something that massed, non-varied practice won’t be able to achieve.?

Practical tips for designing learning experiences:?

• Mix the type of practice while interleaving. Use different practice methods: simulation, scenarios, reflection, elaboration, 1to1 coaching, mentorship. This increases learners ability to discriminate and induce, to be able to apply learning in new settings at a later date.?
• Mix up examples/ scenarios/ problems that require different solutions = challenge them to recognise the problem type and select the right solution.
• Create blended learning journeys that allow for different practice opportunities over time instead of one-time courses/ training.
• Make use of scaffolding in your learning experiences and guide the learners through the complexity of the new skill step-by-step. Be wary of designing challenges that are too complicated for them to solve with what they already know or just learned.

Applying a good mix of these practices into your learning experiences will not always guarantee success. Learning transfer depends on so much more than just great learning experiences. Lack of manager support, peer pressure, company culture, old habits, gaps in the reward system, inefficient processes or technology - these are just some of the barriers that learners will have to face while they struggle to apply what they learned and change their behavior.

But if you were to take away just one thing, then let it be this: find out what the learners truly care about, and design with that in mind. You can can make the learning experience as engaging as possible, but if you don't have learners buy-in, then your learning experience will be just a cool experience, where little learning takes place.