Know the Mind, Know the Learner: Applying Brain Science to Improve Training

We work hard to create effective training programs but we are disappointed when our employees fail to learn or don’t transfer learning back to their workplace. We might choose to blame the trainer or our technology, but training often fails because we don’t understand the mind of the learner. As a result, we build training modules that are not consistent with the brain’s natural means of acquisition. Furthermore, we fail to reinforce memory and collect data that will allow us to iterate our training and make it more effective. Training should be more effective, and it can be more effective once we develop programs that are compatible with how the learner’s mind operates.

In this energetic workshop you’ll explore 10 core principles that will help you understand how the brain controls learning and memory. Through demonstrations you will gain a new understanding of the mind that will help you create training programs that will effectively engage the brain and maximize learning and recall. After this workshop, you will have both a deep understanding of the core principles of modern cognitive science, and you will be able to immediately deploy these ideas to create training that is tailored to the human mind. You will also learn to create a systematic program of follow-up training that overcomes the forgetting curve and allows your organization to generate Level 4 and 5 data that proves the value of your training. The workshop will be highly interactive; each of the 10 concepts will be taught using videos, demonstrations, and stand-up activities. Once all of the concepts have been introduced, we will present you with a series of training challenges and you will have hands-on opportunities to create learning modules that link into the human mind. Come prepared to have fun… and learn.

In this session, you will learn:

• To design training and change management solutions that are compatible with the brain’s natural way of learning
• To create social learning communities that are based on psychological principles of observational learning
• To develop incentive systems that reinforce desired behaviors and that are based on established principles of conditioning
• To use social media, mobile devices, and coach-on-demand technologies in ways that produce pro-social change
• To improve employees’ attention within mobile learning by understanding the secrets to people’s levels of consciousness
• To design effective “follow-up training” by tapping into mnemonic principles of memory
• To deliver either visual messages or auditory messages based on an understanding of the brain’s dual-coding mechanisms

Technology discussed:

Micro-training, incentives, video-training, post training reinforcement, assessment, learning objectives, ROI, brain compatibility, gamification, simulations