What conditions best support learning and personal growth? - Ed Batista

Stephanie West Allen points to a thought-provoking and compelling answer to the question above in the work of Judy Willis, a former neurologist who obtained her teaching credential after a 15-year career in medicine and now teaches at Santa Barbara Middle School and blogs at Psychology Today. Willis brings an unusual and highly valuable combination of hands-on experience as an educator and a deep understanding of neuroscience to her writing, and her article in the Summer 2007 issue of Educational Leadership, "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education," is one of the most helpful pieces I've read on the subject of understanding the practical relevance of neuroscientific research. Willis's article is focused on formal education in a classroom setting, but I believe that the findings she discusses have relevance for any experience in which we're trying to impart knowledge, stimulate understanding and foster growth, from a group workshop to an executive coaching session to an impromptu feedback conversation.

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'Working" Memory can be improved - at least, in mice

Mice trained to improve their working memory become more intelligent, suggesting that similar improvements in working memory might help human beings enhance their brain power, according to research published March 26 in Current Biology by researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. "Working memory refers to a short-term memory system used to complete a task, such as remembering a phone number, a grocery list, reading comprehension, or something else not intended to be stored in long-term memory," says corresponding author Louis Matzel, professor of psychology in Rutgers' School of Arts and Sciences. Working with about 60 young adult, genetically heterogeneous mice, Matzel and his colleagues used mazes to put the mice through a series of exercises designed to challenge and improve their ability to retain and use current spatial information. For example, they would allow a mouse to run through a particular maze (for a food reward) until he had the route down cold, and then teach him to run through a second maze. The researchers would then start the mouse on his way through the first maze, stop him en route and stick him in the second maze.

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Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

This lengthy and yet highly important article in my view forms the basis of a really important discussion that is now occuring globally. Here Tapschott and Williams offer a cogent and compelling plan for re-inventing universities for 21st Century. Read this article and forward it to every single person you know is involved in education. "Encyclopedias, newspapers, and record labels have a lot in common. They all are in the business of producing content. They recruit, manage, and compensate capable producers. Their products are composed of atoms — books, papers, CDs, DVDs — and are costly to create and distribute. Their products are proprietary, and they take legal action against those who infringe their intellectual property. Because they create unique value, their customers pay them, and they have revenue. Their business is possible because of scarcity: quality news, information, knowledge, learning, art.

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Key Learning Strategies for the New Millenium

First, training was, and still is, a way to support learning. Training is not the only way to learn, and it often is not the best way. Second, the need for learning is not going away; it is increasing. Every time an individual or group encounters something new, there is an opportunity, and often a requirement, to learn. This can be a new job, a new task, a new business strategy, a new customer, a new product, a new competitor behavior, and so on. Third, we can take a systematic, performance-based approach to managing learning, not just training, in our organizations.

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Crash course in learning theory

I recently stumbled across a very neat little blog commmunity aptly titled The Creating Passionate Users. This community of bloggers claim they are fascinated by brains, minds and what science can tell us about the practice of making users passionate about their lives and tools. The community is co-ordinated by Dan Russell, a full-time research scientist and software developer at Google who has a PhD from the University of Rochester in Artificial Intelligence and Kathy Sierra who has been interested in the brain and artificial intelligence since her days as a game developer (Virgin, Amblin', MGM). Crash course in learning theory looks at blogging as an educational tool rather than a sales or self promotional tool.

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