10 Brain-Based Learning Laws

I am especially interested in taking teaching techniques that work in the classroom, and adapting them for online teaching. My book Moodle Teaching Techniques began as a long list of classroom teaching techniques that worked for me. I chose techniques from that list, and show the reader how to apply them online.

Jeff Hurt's blog entry, 10 Brain-Based Learning Laws That Trump Traditional Education, suggests 10 research-based principles for effective teaching. His article is intended for classroom teachers and presenters. These principles, or laws of learning, can be accomplished online with some specific techniques. So just like we can take traditional teaching techniques and adapt them for online teaching, we can take the latest research-based teaching principles and apply them online using specific techniques.

Let's look at one of these brain-based laws of learning, and figure out how we can apply it online. 

Law 2: Emotions trumps facts.

Hurt writes that, "Neuroscience has proven that everything the brain learns is filtered through emotions. There are no exceptions. How we use emotion to aide learning determines learning’s success."

To apply this law, we should bring the emotion to class early. Get the student into the desired emotional state first, and then start teaching the student. We can bring an emotional component to our online classes in several ways.

Consider putting an emotional, motivational video into the introduction of your course. For example you could begin a course about the oceans with the traditional course description and list of learing objectives. Or, you could begin it with a fun video:

In 1992, a freighter hit a storm in the Pacific Ocean sending two containers packed with 29,000 plastic ducks overboard. Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how the mighty ocean currents sent them on an epic journey to the four corners of the Earth.

Then, you can state the learning objectives in terms that refer back to this video. For example, instead of saying,

We will learn to identify the major ocean currents, and how they organize themselves into gyres.

we could say:

We will learn about the major ocean currents that probably carried the rubber ducks on their journey, and how the gyres formed by the currents could take the ducks on an endless cicular journey.

Because we are not there to set the emotional tone for our online class, we need to use a proxy to set the tone. Video and audio can set the emotional stage for us.

In future posts, I'll talk about how we can apply some more of Hurt's ten brain-based learning laws.

As always, I welcome your comments! 

Answered Question on Linkedin.com: What successful techniques have you used to improve learner's retention?

I recently answered a question on the Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals' Group of LinkedIn, and wanted to share that answer here on my blog. The question posed was:

What successful techniques have you used to improve learner's retention? Based on my experience, there's only so much information you can stuff into people's heads.
What's the best single tip you would give to help improve the quality and quantity of information that people retain after experiencing the training you've developed?

My single most important tip is this: Instead of training your students to perform the task from memory, teach them why and when to perform the task, and how to use support materials to succeed at the task.

If you are training your students to perform a life-and-death skill under strict time constraints, then of course they need to be able to perform the task from memory, on demand. An emergency room medical procedure would be one example. In that kind of situation, you want them to leave class knowing exactly how to perform the task without any kind of support materials. But that is a rare situation.

In most situations, your students will have time to perform the task. That is, they will have time to find and use reference materials to help them with the task.

Instead of overloading your students with the detailed steps of how to perform a task, perhaps you should consider teaching them how to use the reference and support materials to perform the task. Then, you can focus your training on:

1. Why they need to learn to perform the task (motivation).
   
2. Who needs to be involved in the task (roles and responsibilities).
   
3. When they need to perform the task; where it fits into their workflow (context).
   
4. Which steps are critical or especially difficult (roadblocks and "gotchas").
   
5. Where to get supporting materials for the task (reference materials and job aids).
   

Of course you will still take your students through the detailed steps of performing the task. But instead of focusing on memorizing the how-to information, you'll focus on the information above. While demonstrating, you can reassure them that the "clicks, keystrokes, and actions" are all included in the support materials. After the student performs the task on-the-job a few times, with the help of the support materials, then it becomes committed to memory.

In my experience, this approach avoids information overload during class while enabling students to learn complex, long tasks. Does this agree or disagree with your experience? We want to hear from you in the comments!

The Fastest Way to Create a Course Review in Moodle

Students who read a passage, then took  a test asking them to recall what they read, retain about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods to study the material. That research was published in the journal Science.

Fortunately, Moodle makes it easy to create a quiz that you can use for review purposes. A Review Quiz in Moodle will enable you to re-use a log of the work that you do while creating the course, and, increase your students’ retention of the material. The keys to successfully creating a Review Quiz in Moodle are:

• using feedback in your quiz questions.


• creating a separate category of questions for each topic in your course.


• creating one-page review for each topic in your course.

First, let’s look at the feedback for Moodle questions.

Feedback in Moodle Quiz Questions

In a previous post, I wrote about the various kinds of feedback that you can create in a Moodle quiz. I wrote about how to use feedback that is display when:

• the student selects a specific answer.


• the question is completed, no matter what the student’s answer.


• the student achieves a specific score on the quiz.


• the quiz is completed, no matter what the student’s score.

These four types of feedback give you the ability to make a Moodle quiz into a teaching tool. Instead of using a quiz to just test the student, you can use it to teach.

If you create quiz questions for every topic in your course then you can use a fast, easy method to create a course review. This method assumes that each question in your course includes feedback to teach the student why (s)he is right or wrong, and to help the student remember the correct answer.

Creating a Review Quiz in Moodle

With this method, you will use four phases to create a review quiz:

• Create a category of quiz questions for each topic.


• Create a quiz for each topic.


• Create a one-page review for each topic.


• Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz.

Let’s step through each phase below.

First: Create a category of quiz questions for each topic

Here’s how to prepare your questions for a review quiz:

• For each topic, create a category of quiz questions.


• For each of the categories that you just created, create several quiz questions. Now, you have several quiz questions for each topic.


• For every answer in each question, create feedback that teaches them why that answer is right or wrong. Now, every answer of every question is a teaching tool.


• For every question, create general feedback that explains why that question is relevant. Now, no matter which answer the student selected, (s)he will learn where that question fits into the bug picture.


• Make sure that each quiz question can stand alone. Do not refer to or depend upon any other questions.

Now your question bank for the course looks like this:

Topic 1 Questions

Question 1

Question 2

General Question Feedback: “This question relates to the concept of…”

Answer A

Answer Feedback: “This answer is correct because…”

Answer B

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…”

Answer C

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…

Question 3

Topic 2 Questions

Topic 3 Questions

Now every answer, and every question, is a teaching tool. And, every question can stand on its own. You are ready to create a quiz for each topic.

Second: Create a quiz for each topic

For each topic, create a quiz. You can make the quiz appear in the gradebook, or, make a practice quiz that doesn’t affect the student’s final grade.

Third: Create a one-page review for each topic

For each topic in the course, create a one-page review. This can be a simple bulleted list of key points, an infogram, a video, or any other technique. Keep the review short enough so that it can be read, viewed, or listened to in a few minutes.

Fourth: Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz

Finally, you are ready to create the review quiz. In the review quiz, you will assemble the one-page reviews and teaching questions.        Â

• Create a quiz, and add instructions that look like this:

This quiz is practice for the final quiz. Your grade for this quiz will not be used to calculate your final grade.

This quiz will present one page of bullet points for each topic that we covered. These bullet points are reminders of what you studied in the topic.

Then, the quiz will present some random questions from that topic's quiz. Do your best on these questions. Feel free to refer back to the topic's presentation while attempting the questions. As before, the questions will give you feedback if you answer incorrectly.

The reminders before the questions, and feedback after the questions, are designed to help you learn the material.

You can attempt this practice quiz as many times as you like. When you're ready, proceed to the final quiz.

There are two things that make creating a review quiz in Moodle easy. Moodle enables you to add Descriptions to a quiz, and to add manual page breaks.

In a Moodle quiz, a Description is just a question that consists of nothing but a Web page. You can put anything into a Description that you can put on a normal Web page. The student doesn’t need to answer anything, and the Description doesn’t get scored. Usually, you use a Description to explain a section of the quiz. In this case, you will use the Description to display the one-page summary of the topic.

• Add a Description to the quiz, and name it something like “Topic 1 Review Page.” Then add the one-page review for the topic to the Description.


• After the Review Page, add a page break.


• After the page break, add several random questions from the topic. To do this, you will select the topic’s question category, and then instruct Moodle to add a certain number of random questions from that category.


• After the random questions, add a page break.


• Repeat steps 2 through 5 until you have a Review Page and random questions for each topic in your course.

Congratulations! You’ve created a review test for your course. Because you re-used questions from your previous quizzes, you made efficient use of your work. Because you alternated a brief review of a topic with questions about that topic, you used the learning principle of Immediate Feedback to improve retention.

Why did I write Moodle Teaching Techniques?

I collect techniques. Techniques for writing clearly, techniques for constructing e-learning courses, techniques for making the best tiramisù (there is more to life than work, no?). When I began writing my collection of teaching techniques for Moodle, my intent was to add them to my first book, Moodle E-Learning Course Development. By the time I collected a handful of Moodle teaching techniques, I realized that they didn't belong in the same book as the general how-to instructions for using Moodle. Is this because the techniques in Moodle Teaching Techniques are more advanced than those in Moodle E-Learning Course Development? Partly, but if that were the only reason, I would have folded them into the first book anyway. It's because these techniques are developed and written from a different point of view.

When I wrote Moodle E-Learning Course Development, I started with Moodle and worked towards creating an online course that adheres to good teaching practices. The book is organized according to the workflow that works best in Moodle: create your course, add static course material, then add interactive material, then add social material, then customize the roles for your course...and so on. The approach in this book is to start with what Moodle can do and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. The keystrokes and clicks in this book apply only to Moodle.

When I wrote Moodle Teaching Techniques, I started with a list of proven learning principles. I then developed Moodle techniques that used these principles. Some of these techniques work around Moodle's limitations, which makes them inappropriate for a book on using Moodle as it was intended. Others combine features, or use features in unexpected ways. In each case, the approach in this book is to start with a research-based learning principle and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. Moodle Teaching Techniques is less about keystrokes, and and more about teaching techniques. You could probably apply all of the techniques in this book to another LMS, like ATutor or ILIAS. The keystrokes and clicks would change, but the most important parts of the book would not.

So here are two approaches that hopefully take you to the same place: creating an effective, engaging e-learning experience for your students. And that's the result all e-learning developers are striving for, no matter what tool we use.

Moodle Teaching Techniques

Moodle Teaching Techniques is my newest book from Packt Publishing. This book is for Moodle teachers and course creators who want to use Moodle's features in more creative ways. The book is subtitled Creative Ways to Use Moodle for Constructing Online Learning Solutions.

This book focuses on best practices for constructing learning solutions, such as:

• Applying your teaching techniques through Moodle
• Creative uses for Moodle’s standard features
• Workarounds, providing alternative solutions
• Abundantly illustrated with screenshots of the solutions you’ll build
• When and how to apply the different learning solutions

It's especially suited for university and professional teachers.

The publisher's website

The publisher's website has a detailed description of the book: http://www.packtpub.com/Moodle-Teaching-Techniques-Open-Source/book

Reviews of Moodle Teaching Techniques

Susan Smith Nash, the "E-Learning Queen," published an extensive review of the book: http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com/2007/11/moodle-teaching-techniques-meets.html

Free Software Magazine was kind enough to say that "This type of practical advice is worth its weight in gold": http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/book_review_moodle_teaching_techniques

Harold Jarche posted a very short review on his learning and technology blog. I enjoyed the comments about using a dedicated learning management system versus making a mashup of other tools: http://www.jarche.com/?p=1447

Our Lady's Catholic High School, a mathematics and computing specialist high school, uses Moodle and also offers training in Moodle. See their review on their Moodle training blog: http://www.moodletraining.org/?p=20

And of course, there's always the Amazon.com reviews from those who've purchased the book: http://www.amazon.com/Moodle-Teaching-Techniques-William-Rice/dp/184719284X/