I wanted to take a look back on the month that was and see if there is any connective tissue to be found. Mostly, i’ve blogged about various brain-based mechanisms and speculated about how they might be applied to adult learning. The common elements seem to be neurotransmitters in stimulating reward centres and mirror neurons in giving us a kind of empathy. The other common element is like the biological basis for empathy, with mirror neurons seemingly tricking our brain into believing we are having the experience of the other person, well what we think they are experiencing anyway. MORE >>

When meeting a potential client for an eLearning or blended learning project for the first time, many sales people start with curriculum and scope based questions. This is the wrong focus, becuase it is building in assumptions from the very beginning and may not be in the best interests of the client. It may also mean you miss other opportunities to help the business and win new projects. better approach is to ask about what the business is trying to acheive, its vision and mission stuff, its broad strategic plans and so on. MORE >>

A team of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University has uncovered how the brain organises concrete nouns like ‘apple’ using fMRI and developed a consistent model that has major implications for how we organise information for learners (taxonomies). Subjects heard 60 different concrete nouns whilst being imaged and a computer analysed the results looking for patterns. What they discovered were three main semantic factors underpinning the neural representation: Manipulation – how you physically interact with the object (how you hold it, kick it, twist it, etc.). MORE >>

Now this one is a real suprise. Everyone assumes that learning that is fun delivers better results right? There’s research to support it, e-learning games are very constructivist, they motivate learners more effectively than boring old traditional learning approaches, they very hot, very now! But… A new study suggests that whilst fun learning games are motivational for lower achievers, high achievers may percieve ‘fun’ learning as a less credible guage of excellence and as a result it undercuts their desire to excel. Anyway interesting stuff. MORE >>

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