Toys Aren’t Us! Dressing the room without changing the course is simply not enough! Sometimes we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Here’s one failed experience in implementing Brain Friendly Learning that we can all learn from. A trainer from a large organization had picked up that “themed events” were very brain-friendly, and spent ages decorating her training room on a “Star Wars” theme. She had Star Wars music, Star Wars posters, Star Wars action figures on the tables – the whole works. Her intention was positive – she wanted to break from the conventional classroom setting, which carries negative associations and generates suppressive, mind-numbing feelings for some people. A good idea. The problem was that was all this trainer did. The course itself stayed essentially the same. It was still lecture-based, overly cognitive, and boring. Too much instructor presentation, too little learner involvement. The result? A big bomb. After raising learners’ hopes with a new physical environment, these hopes were crushed to the ground by the same old non-collaborative, authority-driven teaching method. After the negative evaluations were in, the room decorations were dismantled and Brain Friendly Learning suffered a huge setback in the eyes of the organisation. What can we learn from this? That the essence of BFL is getting people truly involved in their own learning, not merely adding toys, music and decorations. BFL involves transforming the fundamental structure of your learning designs to get the whole learner involved. If you’re not willing or able to do the whole thing, just doing part of it can be a mistake. If you really feel you must change things in small steps – then focus FIRST on changing the way you design the learning experience and forget the toys. Here are some simple ways of facilitating creation rather than just consumption:
On their own, these things are just fluff
May the force be with you!