 |
 |
Brain Based Learning and Conventional Teaching Styles and Games |
Brain based learning is defined as a comprehensive approach to education with its foundations based in how our brain naturally learns. We have modern neuroscience through its MRIs (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), EEGs (Electroencephalography), PET Scans (Positron emission tomography), and CT or CAT scans (Computed tomography) to thank for much of this new found knowledge. Advocates of Brain based learning insist there is a distinct difference between using a teaching methodology in sync with and not in opposition to how we actually learn. In his book, Human Brain & Human Learning (1983), Leslie Hart argues that "teaching without an awareness of how the brain learns is like designing a glove with no sense of what a hand looks like–its shape, how it moves." Other noted authors in the field include Howard Gardner, Harvard University; Eric Jensen; Renate and Geoffrey Caine; Marian Diamond, U. C., Berkeley; Thomas Armstrong; and Candace Pert.
Andrea Spears and Leslie Wilson in their article on "Brain-Based Learning Highlights" http://www.uwsp.edu/education/celtProject/innovations/Brain-Based%20Learning/brain-based_learning.htm bring to our attention three interactive teaching elements defined by Caine and Caine in their book, "Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain (1991)". These principles include Orchestrated Immersion. A fantastically expressive phrase, referencing the instructor's ability to thoroughly engage students in a learning experience. Spears and Wilson provide these examples; "The primary teacher builds a rainforest in the classroom complete with stuffed animals and cardboard and paper trees that reach to the ceiling. The intermediate teachers take students to a school forest to explore and identify animal tracks in the snow and complete orienteering experiences with a compass. The junior high teachers take a field trip to an insurance company to have students shadow an employee all day. The high school teachers of astronomy have students experience weightlessness by scuba diving in the swimming pool."
The second principle given to us by Caine and Caine is called Relaxed Alertness. This has to do with creating a challenging, yet unthreatening learning environment. And finally a third principle attributed to Geoffrey Caine and Eric Jensen, Active Processing. In essence it is not enough that the student simply experiences or is immersed in the knowledge, but that they are also provided with opportunity (through the instructor) to have multiple opportunities to receive feedback, question, compare, and relate the information to what they have already learned.
Active Processing involves:
• Detailed sensory observation;
• Deliberate practice and rehearsal;
• Making links to previous learning;
• Multiple modes of questioning;
• Incorporation of expert knowledge;
• Analysis of data and sources;
• Ongoing reflection on feedback; and
• Expansion of capacities for self-discipline and self-regulation.
(From The Caine and Caine Learning Center, The Three Elements Expanded)
Let's now perhaps take a gander at the 500 pound gorilla in the room. Great stuff you say, fantastic in theory, and maybe "easier said than done". Teachers and trainers have always been charged with a curriculum to cover, complete, and get through. The stuffy college professor, comforted by his lectern, succinctly bellows "I have served to you the information on a gilded platter, now, my dear students; it is only left up to you, to eat." There is a certain wisdom in the way things have been done in the past. And a rationale for why we have for years taught using a very instructor-centered approach. The reason is, in a word, efficiency. If the charge is to dispense information quickly, and so that all have an equal opportunity to grasp it, than let the lectures begin.
Perhaps there is a middle ground. Some combination between learning which occurs in a relaxed yet challenging environment, immerses students within a valuable learning experience, yet ensures that the information is delivered in an efficient and comprehensive manner.
Training and teaching games are certainly not a panacea in this regard, but in combination, and if done correctly, games can provide both efficient learning as well as a rich learning experience. Typically games have been used in classroom situations for reviewing program material. This is certainly helpful because each time learning is presented synaptic connections become stronger, and information more fully engrained. Games naturally provide a relaxed and socially stimulated environment well suited for learning. Indeed one of the brain based learning core principles states "The brain is social. It develops better in concert with other brains." But perhaps games can be even better learning tools if we allow the students to not only play the game, but actually create it.
Take for example any of the computer quiz show game formats developed by TGI. We always suggest a way that the game can be played. We also add to this however that teachers and trainers may prefer to develop or have their students develop the rules for the game. This might include how questions will be delivered (Random team selection, sequential rotation or via quick response), how scoring will be done (question values, double and triple score options), and how players or teams will need to provide question answers (with time limits, pass options, and answering as individual players or as a team). Imagine you've just delivered a program training module. Hopefully it was delivered to an engaged and interactive audience. You've introduced a fun quiz show game, but challenged your group to develop the game rules. Then you take it one step further, and ask perspective teams to review the available resource materials, and develop questions for the opposing team/s to answer. Imagine the excitement you're building. Finally for all incorrect answers given during game play, the team that developed a particular question, is asked to expound on the question after the game has ended. In other words, to teach!
Here we're playing a game, but also creating an experience for students to develop, problem solve, explore and teach program information with a structured classroom setting. In addition we are allowing the game to provide a comprehensive and efficient means for reviewing the program's content. It is again not the only way to combine principles of brain based learning with efficient teaching methodology, but certainly plausible and a valuable attempt. |
|
|
 |
|
