Leading the Learning Revolution by Jeff Cobb

Author:Jeff Cobb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM Books
Published: 2013-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Stimulate Multiple Senses

Take a moment to think about a really great meal you shared with friends or family. What comes to mind? Chances are you visualize the scene in your mind, you hear snippets of the conversation that went on, you can even recall the smells of the food, or perhaps the wine, and taste the last bite of the wonderful dessert that capped off the meal.

All of our senses play a vital role in how we process and remember new experiences and information, but traditional educational experiences, which rely very heavily on learners listening to a lecturer or reading text, often do not take full advantage of this fact. It makes a difference. For example, educational researchers Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer conducted an analysis of eleven studies that looked at test performance of students who learned from animation and narrative versus narration alone or from text and illustrations versus text alone. In all eleven comparisons, the learners who participated in multimedia lessons—narration with animation, or text and illustrations—did better on a subsequent test than did those who learned from words alone. The multimedia learners did 55 to 121 percent better than those learning from just audio or just text.6

Now, there’s a catch: You can’t just plug random stimulation into your learning experiences and expect it to have the desired impact. Senses have to be engaged in ways that are relevant to the learning experiences. If you’re using images in a lecture, for instance, the images and what you say need to be tied together and supportive of each other. Intrusive Microsoft PowerPoint templates or stock photography that is inserted in a page of bullet points simply for decorative purposes not only do not support learning; they may actually detract from it by distracting the learner.

In general, however, providing content in multiple formats is an excellent approach. If you create videos or audio files, provide transcripts or brief summary sheets in writing. Whenever possible, create brief checklists, worksheets, or other items that learners can use to actually apply whatever they may hear or see.

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