Are you using effective learning techniques in your training?

If you walk passed an Alive & Kicking training room you will often hear music playing. And if you happen to be curious and glance in, you will see brightly coloured posters hung on the walls, dice, tangrams, potatoes, balloons and smelly pens strewn about the tables.

You would be forgiven for wondering who the party is for, and why you haven’t been invited.

In fact, what it means is that your training team understands the importance of using Accelerated Learning Techniques in the adult learning environment.

What is Accelerated learning?

Accelerated Learning was born in the mid-1960s, and developed over the following decades into a highly efficient set of techniques that have been shown to speed training time, reduce training costs, and improve training results—as well as provide a learning experience that keeps us engaged and motivated.

Isn’t it interesting though, that even though this knowledge has been around for so long, there are still so many training courses that are instructor led, PowerPoint driven, one way exchanges that are tiring and exhausting. When you are using accelerated learning techniques effectively in your sessions – you end the day with energised and happy participants!

Everyone has their own default learning style — a way of learning that suits them best. If you know and use the techniques that match your preferred way of learning, you learn more naturally.

Because it is more natural for you, it becomes easier.

And because it is easier, it is quicker.

By also incorporating well-researched memory techniques, Accelerated Learning makes learning an enjoyable, successful and satisfying experience.

The Essentials of Accelerated Learning

1. Learning Involves the Mind and the Body.
   Learning is more than the old school model of conscious, rational, “left-brained” learning. It involves the whole body/mind with all its feelings and senses.
2.  Learning is Creation, Not Consumption.
   Knowledge is something a learner creates, not absorbs. Learning happens when a learner blends new knowledge and skill into his or her existing awareness. Learning is the act of creating new meanings and new neural networks in our total brain/body system.
3. Teamwork Aids Learning.
   All good learning has a social base. We often learn more by interacting with peers than we learn by any other means. Competition between learners impedes learning. Cooperation among learners speeds it. A genuine learning community is always better for learning than a collection of isolated individuals.
4. Learning Takes Place on Many Levels at the Same Time.
   Learning is not a matter of taking one little thing at a time in linear fashion, but absorbing many things at once. Good learning engages on many levels at the same time (conscious and para-conscious, mental and physical) and uses all the receptors and senses and paths it can into our total brain/body system.
5. Learning Comes From Doing the Work Itself (With Feedback).
   People learn best in context. Things learned in isolation are hard to remember and quick to evaporate. We learn how to drive by driving, how to write by writing, how to type by typing, how to lead by leading and how to care for customers by caring for customers. The real and the actual are far better teachers than the hypothetical and the abstract – so long as we ensure we allow for total immersion, feedback, reflection, and re-immersion.
6. Positive Feelings Greatly Improve Learning
   Emotions determine both the quality and quantity of one’s learning. Negative feelings inhibit learning. Positive feelings accelerate it. Learning that is unpleasant, painful and boring can’t hold a candle to learning that is fun, effortless and engaging.
7. The Brain Absorbs Image Information Instantly and Automatically.
   The human nervous system is more of an image processor than a word processor. Visual images are much easier to grasp and retain than words in the air. Translating words into images will make those verbal abstractions quicker to absorb and easier to retain

Do you incorporate Adult Learning Techniques into your training?  What have you found to be the most effective?

Joanna Bryant – Customer Relationship Manager with Perth’s leading training development, design and delivery experts.  Helping you build a culture of highly engaged, highly motivated and high performing people.