Brain and Behavior Blog No. 9: So, the good guys didn’t have faster bullets after all.

Like many other boys growing up in the 1950’s, the B&B Blogger never turned down an opportunity to go to the movies. [That's what it was called. You never went to a movie. It was always, "Hey, yawanttago ta the movies?"] Westerns weren’t the B&B Blogger’s favorites. But, in those days, probably seven out of every 10 movies in which the Blogger and his friends would be interested were westerns – even if the hero was a dog, and not somebody on a white horse.

And, in probably seven out of 10 westerns, the big and nearly climactic scene would feature a gunfight. There might be multiple actors involved (usually stupidly “hiding” behind a water trough or a split-rail fence). But, the main focus was always on the duelists: The bad guy, played way, WAY over the top by somebody like Lee Van Cleef, would come slowly (but jingly) down the street – every step a determined act of sweaty meanness. The good guy, played straight as an arrow by Roy or Jimmy or John or Gary, would be seen standing still at the other end of a long dusty street, gulping and not really wanting to move forward. No wonder! The good guy always had a handicap, right? It might be that he had hurt his gun hand and was going to have to draw with his left ear. Or maybe he only had a single-shot derringer to go up against the bad guy’s TWO six-guns with frighteningly long barrels. But, of course, the main handicap was that no matter how stinkin’ bad the bad guy was, the good guy simply could NOT DRAW FIRST. No matter. The good guy ALWAYS drew second and ALWAYS won.

Of course, the Blogger and all of his friends would be happy at the outcomes of these duels. But, soon enough, there would be scoffing at the impossibility of drawing second and still winning – every time. The Blogger would then try to explain to his friends why actions controlled by the pre-supplementary motor area region of the medial-frontal cortex are typically slightly more inhibited at onset than are actions initiated by the planned movement sequence in the parietal cortex. Yet, inevitably, before the Blogger could get to the most exciting parts of his explanation, the group’s conversation would veer quickly to debates over something like the relative merits of Camels vs. Luckies.

…And, thus, somewhat-fond memories tickled the B&B Blogger’s hippocampus this week as he was reading the Feb 3 edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society and came upon an article on the neurological superiority of reaction over intention. Welchman, Stanley, Schomers, Miall, and Bulthoff reported a clever experiment showing that initiation of an action takes nano-longer than the initiation of the same physiological behavior made in reaction to the former, likely because the two processes are controlled by different parts of the brain. As you must have surmised by now, the speculation – in gunfighter terms – is that an unprompted action is controlled by the more inhibited medial-frontal cortex while reactive behaviors take the faster parietal loop. The possible explanation? Throughout evolution, it was more important to react to a predator’s attack than to think about attacking a predator.

In closing, the B&B Blogger would like to send out a personal, and long-overdue, message to J.G., Weed, Cueball, and Nerf: Nah-na-nah-na-nan-nah!!!! I told you so, you jerks.

BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR BLOG No. 8 – The Brain-targeted Teaching Model (An Oldie but Goodie)

The rush is on to write and market books on teaching/learning reexamined in light of recent discoveries by neuroscientists. Often lost, among newer, less valuable work, is a book published in 2003 and written by Mariale Hardiman, a Johns Hopkins faculty member and a pioneer in the “neuroeducation” movement.

The book is called The Brain-targeted Teaching Model and it’s unlikely that anyone would bother to buy the book these days because Dr. Hardiman gives away the whole shtick on her web site: www.braintargetedteaching.org. The model points to six dimensions of learners’ neurophysiological responses to stimuli that must be “tuned” by teachers if the goal is maximum learning. A few examples of teacher-tuning taken from lesson plans on the web site are provided below: [Note: The B&B Blogger has replaced many of the obscure uses of neuroscience lexicon with everyday terms.]

1. Emotional climate. Neuroscientists (NSs) tell us that all data coming into the brain pass through an emotional center before they arrive at the thinking center. So, all data get an emotional spin along the way. Teachers, then, need to create positive, non-threatening emotional states for each lesson. One teacher uses deep breathing exercises prior to a lesson on oxygen. Another has children mix peanut butter and jelly just prior to a unit on chemical solutions.

2. Physical environment. NSs have shown that low-volume classical music has a negative impact on activation level (that is, it is inherently relaxing, a good thing). However, it also has a negative effect on focus and concentration (not a good thing, depending). So, teachers might use background music when kids are doing tasks that don’t require focus to help prepare them for the next (music-less) period in which concentration will be needed.

3. Learning design. NSs believe that the “natural” way we learn is by putting new things into the big content buckets we already have in our heads. So, Hardiman suggests that teachers move away from a linear presentation of information such as:

Big idea
Supporting idea
Supporting idea
Supporting idea

Big idea
Supporting idea
Etc.

And, move toward a presentation of 3-4 big ideas/buckets and have kids sort each subsequently presented supporting idea into the correct bucket. A unit on the Civil Rights Era might have three buckets like: 1) Discrimination against African Americans, 2) Peaceful protests and Civil Rights leaders, and 3) the culture of the era. Supporting ideas or examples would include school desegregation (1), Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (2) and how African Americans were portrayed in movies (3).

4. Teaching for mastery. Data that are no longer under active consideration (i.e., that are not in working memory) get pushed to long-term memory and if those data are never retrieved, they will be forgotten. For this dimension of learning, teachers need to find ways of getting kids to retrieve and visually lock-in previously learned material. An example provided involves an 8th grade class on Greek and Roman mythology. In the beginning of a several-week lesson, students learn the common characteristics of gods and goddesses. These are listed on a chart. Then at the end of each lesson about a specific god (let’s say, the god, “Bob”), they write under a picture of Bob his godly characteristics. Still later in the unit, students have to group/sort gods and goddesses by the characteristics they share.

5. Teaching for application. NSs believe that we are more likely to understand and remember a concept if we reconsider it in a different or higher-order way after the initial learning. An example from a unit on immigration asks kids to figure out why certain immigrant groups ended up in concentrations in different parts of the country. For example, kids might say that many Norwegians ended up in Minnesota because they were comfortable with the weather there. If that’s the case, the teacher might then ask why so many Somalis immigrated to the same area. Etc.

6. Evaluating learning. The title for this one is a little misleading. The insight from neuroscience is that people learn best by receiving frequent and timely feedback. So, teachers are simply encouraged to provide more individual feedback, more often. If the feedback is well done, a kid wouldn’t just get a B in reading and not know what judgments or scores went into that composite rating. The sooner we know we got something right (or wrong), the better.

Again, loads of more information about Brain-targeted Teaching can be found at www.braintargetedteaching.org. And, to close with an Amazon-type suggestion: If you like this stuff, you might also like the book, 12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles, by Caine, Caine, McClintic and Klimek, 2008, Corwin Press.

Run with the Bulls

I was reading a book titled “Run with the Bulls” on a flight recently to our offices in Covington, KY.  The book was written by Dr. Tim Irwin, an organizational psychology consultant to Fortune 100 companies.  In his chapter on “Getting to the Arena,” I read something about courage that really captures the kind of “laser focus” that all of us should have in our approach to work and how to go after something with the idea of winning. 

Irwin talks about Courage using the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie.  In that last scene where Indy’s father is intentionally shot by the bad guy knowing that only water from the Holy Grail can heal him.  Right at the edge of the lethal gauntlet where several have died, the villain shouts at Jones, “Now is the time to decide what you really believe!”   Does Indy believe the Grail is real?  Is he willing to risk his life to pursue his quest in earnest? 

The part that hit me was the belief part.  There are a lot of people who have “about-ism.”  That is, they talk “about” what they want to do. Lots of ideas, possibilities, or dreams.  Even great ideas about business deals. But these are not beliefs undergirded with conviction for which the person is willing to take significant risks.

 Once you are convinced of your beliefs, and not just talking “about” possibilities, it will drive how you approach work.  This is especially true for areas of high risk or where you are moving into areas of new possibilities.  To be successful, you have to know (and believe!) that your previous experience is going to pay off.  This kind of conviction will drive the focus of how you approach the work so that you have a greater chance of being successful.  When we are not sure about our convictions and experience, we can easily be distracted by all kinds of activities that don’t relate to doing well on what we really should be going after.

BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR BLOG No. 7 – Your brain, a real page turner.

Think about a book in which the plot thickens chapter after chapter and you “just can’t put it down.” Think about Final Jeopardy and waiting to see who will come up with the correct question. Think about pulling for you team to make that last second field goal to win a game.

Suspense! It’s so much fun, right? Wrong. Your brain hates suspense. Where do you think that the cliché, “The suspense is killing me!!!!” comes from? Okay. Now, think about the kid (back in the day) who was told, “Just wait until your Father comes home!” That’s more like it! You can imagine how much that kid wants the hammer to fall. The wait is worse than the eventual punishment.

Well, then, why does some kind of suspense seem so pleasurable? Historically, many psychologists believed that the pleasurable sensation came about as a result of anticipating a desired future state. That is, your brain was secreting a bit of the fun-hormone (dopamine) to give you a taste of how you’re going to feel when your team wins (or whatever). Other psychologists believed that a combination of heightened focus and an increase in activation level created the pleasure-sensation – something on the order of a “runner’s high.” But, YET AGAIN, neuroscience research steps in to make all the -ologists look stupid.

It’s now been demonstrated (through research at the National Institutes of Health, UCLA and Baylor’s Med School – among others) that in suspenseful situations our brains reward us for discovering any clues about what’s going to happen, i.e., what the outcome is actually going to be. Thus, the current belief is that this little squirt of dopamine isn’t anticipatory. Rather, it’s a reward for vigilance, the watchfulness that leads to self-preservation. It’s what kept our forefathers alert for any signs of attack by the heathens and our foremothers on guard for anything that might prove dangerous to the kids. In fact, that’s why you should never get between a mother grizzly and her offspring. You see, even our fore-bears got these rewards for protecting their cubs.

Twitter Follow Friday

Some of the learning or technology related Twitter subscribers we follow include:

@nybooks

@tom_peters

@stephenRCovey

@HavardBiz

@kenblanchard

@zeitz

@gtdguy

@elupdate

@learningpool

@lllearning

@dogolearning

@mslearning

@nlearning

@pbslearningnow

@scobleizer

@bshermcincy

@newmediacincy

@tonykarrer

@copyblogger

@mzinga

@boslearn

@trainingcentral

@astd

@ispi1962

@socialmediacomm

@jimkukral

@socialnetdaily

Minimalism: Does it work for expert users?

Does an approach to instructional design and technical communication that minimizes the amount of content vs. the usefulness of the content always work better than a more comprehensive or “systems” approach?

Well, it depends.  It depends on the user, the medium and/or modes of delivery and, in some cases, who is authoring the content/instruction.  Generally, a minimalist approach to instructional design and end user documentation focuses on the novice user of a technology or tool.  Complex task domains and power users may not be the ideal audience for a minimalist instructional design and documentations approach. 

Expert users often require richer, more scenario driven content than a minimalist approach can (or should provide).  Understanding the level of task that the audience needs to have represented is the key to documentation/instructions for expert users.

For instance, training and/or documentation on how to use a new feature of a surgical device may require more than the step action, task based approach commonly used in minimalist systems documentation.  The surgeon needs to know the context in which the device should be used, what a “successful” use of the device looks likes, and, most importantly, what the consequences of an error might be and how to recover from it.

Since their goals are well defined expert users want to spend little time reading procedural information and more time working with the software (or other tools). A key minimalist guideline is: allow experts to avoid excessive reading.  Providing directions they can pursue rather than step-by-step instructions takes advantage of their interest in exploratory learning. 

Instructional designers and technical writers tread a very fine line in looking for the right approach, that will enable the best performance for the right user at the right time.  Guidelines for the development of instruction for novice users are numerous – but few and far between for the development of instruction for expert users. Barbara Mirel (User experience and Usability lead at University of Michigan National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics) lists five themes that help lead instruction for complex tasks away from the conventional:

• Develop rich scenarios about activity in context rather than narrow scenarios about unit tasks.
• Build interactivity into instruction instead of presenting, for example, view only semantic maps and graphic browsers.
• Provide multiple cases that are thematically linked and not just single cases (elaborated examples).
• Bring misconceptions to the surface and examine them as part of instructing users in detecting, diagnosing, and recovering from errors.
• Develop multiple analogies, metaphors, and examples that mutually support a single point or purpose and not merely one analogy, metaphor or example per point.

Season’s Greetings from TiER1

From all of us at Tier1, we would like to wish you all a happy Holiday Season. We hope that you get to spend time with family and friends celebrating a season of joy.

 

Thank you for a wonderful 2009, and we look forward to an even better 2010!

 

-The TiER1 Team

How do virtual environments affect the future of learning?

Overwhelmed by Google Wave? Wait, what’s Wave?

If you’ve received a Google Wave invite, perhaps you were overwhelmed and confused the first time you logged in like I was. Or maybe you’ve never even heard of Google Wave. Either way, I recently found a great FREE resource to get you up to speed on Google Wave.

Appropriately titled “The Complete Guide to Google Wave,” this online guide describes everything in simple terms. They start with the basics like what Google Wave is and how to sign up, then build up to Wave-specific terminology, possible use cases, and advanced features. I especially liked this video explaining how Wave is different from and improves on email:

Don’t let the prominent “$6 Buy Now” graphic throw you off – that’s for the PDF version download. Not that 6 bucks is a lot, but you can read the whole guide on their site for free; just scroll down and click on the chapters.

I’m still exploring and tinkering with Wave myself, but it has a lot of potential to improve communication and collaboration – for work and play. So get yourself signed up for a free invite and read the free guide while you’re waiting. Then you’ll be ready to wave like a pro when you’re given the green light.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

How does today’s information overload change the way people learn?