Brain-adapted Learning – Preparation, theory and practice

An optimised brain-adapted learning assumes that as many senses as possible are active in a content that is engaging, explorative, and educational. But to get the full effect, an additional ingredient is required in the preparation phase, namely exercise, physical exercise, which contributes to improved memory, increased receptivity to learning, and increased creativity and more.

Open your mind with physical exercise

According to the psychiatrist, doctor and best-selling author Anders Hansen in the book Hjärnstark (Brain Strength), physical exercise has a significant impact on people’s learning. This includes improved concentration, improved memorization, and enhanced creativity that help learning to become more effective and engaging for people who have exercised before starting the day’s lesson. 

Research studies show significant impact on, among other things, reading comprehension, mathematics and learning in general. Where physical training strengthens different parts of the brain by strengthening the grey matter of the brain that processes information and stores it in the memory. In addition, the brain’s white matter, which manages the signals between brain cells, increases connectivity. To conclude, in order to optimise brain-adapted learning, a significant proportion of physical exercise must be included in the schedule … every learning day … throughout all your lifelong learning journey.

Let your senses be your guide

Learning presupposes experiences and knowledge that we receive with our senses. That a learning environment can offer a lot and varying sensory stimulation is therefore crucial for an individual’s knowledge development. The effect will be even better if learning by doing exercises in a tangible way are integrated into the learning, preferably with emotional ingredients. Learning is thus largely about playing on the receptivity of the senses. With this background, the memory function is a process that activates the entire brain. It is therefore preferable to activate as many senses as possible when learning. The brain researcher Torkel Klingberg, who, among other things, is the author of the book Den översvämmade hjärnan (The Flooded Brain) adds;

“Training a multimodal area would probably benefit more than training an area that only has to do with, for example, hearing.”

Sight and hearing are of course the most important, but the challenge for educators and learning material developers is to try to also activate the other senses and in addition abilities such as motor skills.

Architecture for Brain-adapted Learning

A learning environment should be like when you enter a building and it opens up naturally to you. You shouldn’t need an instruction book or directions to get going. One should be able to understand intuitively where the door is or how to get from one floor to the next. That is, you should be able to learn how to enter and how to use it fully. Like good architecture, a good learning environment is intuitively comprehensible to people. In fact, design and user-friendliness are also the most suitable instruments to distinguish one’s products and services in a competitive market. This is part of the evolution from engineer’s control to letting educators and content experts develop learning.

Because when the student enters a learning environment, she is very keen to easily find the right content in as few steps as possible and to find support and help functions with the same ease. It is also very important that the learning environment does not deprive the user of the power to make decisions. She should therefore be able to easily navigate the content and use the tools that are available. No fuss, straight forward on the personal learning path, let your senses be your guide to new knowledge, anytime, anywhere…

Written by
LarsGoran Bostrom©

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