(Ronald Gross) 5 Ways to Enhance your Learning

Your Learning and Your Brain

From Ronald Gross

Five Ways to Enhance Your Learning

As adult learners and teachers, we can ride the crest of the current revolution in brain research. We can learn easier, faster, better, and more enjoyably!

The new scientific understanding of our most vital organ can help us improve everything about our learning -- from choosing our best times and places to learn, to setting grander goals for how much we can grow.

Based on the work of the world’s leading brain researchers over the past twenty years, here are the top five ways to enhance your learning:

1. Your brain is unique.

Structural brain “mapping” as well as functional MRIs, reveal that our brains differ markedly, both physically and in the way they work. If our faces were as different on the outside, as our brains are inside, some of us would have noses as long as an elephant’s trunk. As a result, some of us are visual learners, others learn auditorially, still others must sense the learning in our bodies.

Understanding this, we can approach any subject in our preferred style. And teachers should strive to make everyone in the class comfortable by teaching around the brain incorporating appeals to each of the different styles in the course of every class session.

Tip: Sharpen your awareness of your brain- preferences by taking some of the enjoyable exercises at Learning Style and Self-Assessment Tests

2. Your brain thrives on challenge and flow.

If we’re learning at too slow and too low a level, we feel we’re in the “drone zone.” Unchallenged, our brains turn off. But a stimulating environment not only turns your brain on, it can make it grow -- as Professor Marion Diamond has demonstrated with by nurturing Smart Rats.

On the other hand, if we’re grappling with learning that is too much of a stretch, we feel frustrated -- I call that the “groan zone.”

So we need to find that optimal state of bracing challenge, in which our brains are stretched but we can do it, if we give it all we’ve got. The result is “flow” -- that wonderful state where time seems to pass swiftly, and we are exhilarated by the sense of accomplishment.

Tip: Find the right level of challenge in what you are currently learning -- in terms of pace, level, and precision -- and shift gears to get into the “flow” zone.

3. Your brain is a physical organ.

Therefore, it is crucially affected by your physical condition and surroundings.

To enhance your learning, take control of conditions such as Lighting, Temperature, Posture and Seating, Tiredness, Air Quality, Time of day (Are you an Owl or a Lark?), and what you’re eating and drinking.

“Double the wattage of every bulb in your house!” was B. F. Skinner’s advice to older learners who complained of their difficulties in reading.

Tip: Ask yourself: what would make my study more comfortable or exciting? Then, take some simple steps to adjust your learning environment accordingly.

4. Your brain deals in emotions as well as thoughts.

Each of us still carries, deep in the back of our heads, our “limbic system” and “reptilean brain” -- legacies of our evolutionary past. These centers of emotion, fear, anxiety, and passion, can strengthen -- or undermine -- our learning. This is the great contribution to our field by the exponents of Emotional Intelligence, like Daniel Goleman in his book with that title.

So activate your feelings to fuel and bolster your learning. Use visualization, free association, and personalization in your learning. For example, list ALL of the reasons you want or need to learn something -- not just the first few which come to mind. Imagine the benefits and powers which will reward your success. Visualize yourself as a master of the subject, and begin to enjoy the gratification. This can turn resistance into attraction.

Tip: Ask yourself what feelings are sapping your motivation to learn, write them down, and consider objectively how you might cope with them better.

5. You have multiple intelligences.

Forget about IQ – it’s bogus. If you’re like most people, you have four to six other kinds of intelligence at which you are especially gifted -- athletic, musical, poetic, practical. Harold Gardner of Harvard has pioneered in this aspect of brain research.

Identify your own special mental strengths and choose your subjects of study with them in mind. When compelled to study a subject which does not seem to relate to your strengths, be creative about how it might relate.

For example, let’s say you’re struggling with Calculus but you are gifted in Music. I just googled that unlikely combination and discovered the following site, among 40 others that explore that odd nexus: Calculus Songs

Tip: Decide to enliven your study by approaching it from the direction of one of your favorite intelligences.

Even if this doesn’t directly help you prepare for tests, it will give you a boost in morale and motivation.

My own favorite way of enlisting my brain in my learning is with this invocation:

Old friend, companion, comrade,
partner, muse and guide:
please join me on my journey –
shine brightly from inside!