Sunday, January 27, 2013

Improve learning through Fun

Learning has always been a stressful activity. We had to have high grades. We had to struggle ourselves through piles of books and information. If we didn't do it right, we FAILED. Our parents were upset, later on, our bosses didn't give us challenging projects or promotions, because we FAILED.
I've never been the best student and suffered a lot because of stress for my exams. Despite all the difficulties with the stuff I had to learn for school and university, I had no problem at all to learn a recording of my favorite comedians by heart. I had to listen to it once or twice and - even until today - I can repeat a lot of these recording.
How comes I had difficulties to learn one thing, and had no difficulty to learn the other ?
The reason lies within our brain.
Frazzle is neural condition during which the prefrontal cortex (the executive center of our brain) is blocked by emotional influences like fear and anger. In this condition we have difficulties to concentrate or even think clear. Remember the famous "black out" during an exam. The executive center of our brain is hijacked by the amygdala.
Opposite to this rather negative situation, the prefrontal cortex can also be stimulated by emotions of happiness, fun, joy. When we feel ourselves in such a condition, we learn faster, we are more creative...

What can we learn from this ? 
When we want people to learn in organizations and create learning results, we should create a positive learning climate. The more they fear to apply the things they learned, the smaller the result will be. When an organization supports its staff to apply the things they learned and makes people want to learn, the more likely people will percieve positive emotions and the more likely they will remember things they learned.

From theory to real life

  • Make people want to learn
  • Make people smile while they are learning
  • Give people faith to apply what they learned.
  • Don't punish people when they don't understand things the first time. Explain again.
  • If you are a trainer - be enthousiastic
  • Make learning fun 

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