How does learning happen best?

Phil Race, Higher Education consultant

A lot has been written about how our brains work. Unfortunately, much of it has been written in language which doesn't mean much to most people. During the last few years, I've asked thousands of people three questions about their own learning, and analysed their answers with them.

It does not seem to matter whom I ask, the answers follow a similar pattern - for all sorts of students, for teaching staff, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, clergymen, brigadiers, and senior citizens. A common factor is we're all human beings, and it seems that whatever we learn successfully, we do it using more-or-less the same processes.

I've written up my thoughts elsewhere* on the answers people give me, but here in Deliberations let's use the power of the technology and get your own answers into play.

Click on one of the options and let me have your feedback on them and to share with other readers:

• Things you're good at
• Things you feel good about
• Things that went wrong
• Lacking the 'want'

*Never Mind the Teaching - Feel the Learning (1993) SEDA Paper No.80, Chapter 1, SEDA Publications, Birmingham. I've also written this up in an interactive form in Chapter 1 of The Open Learning Handbook (2nd Edition, 1994), Kogan Page, London.

Making a model

We've seen from typical answers to the first three feedback questions in which we've explored about how people learn, that there are four main factors in play. For successful learning, they are as follows

1. wanting to learn is important.
   I like the word 'wanting' better than words such as motivation, even though we may mean the same thing. 'Wanting' is a powerful, basic human drive, while 'motivation' is just a bit more clinical and detached. We all know how when people really want something, they usually get it sooner or later (whetheror not it's good for them!).
2. learning by doing is how most people learn, including by trial and error, practice, and learning from mistakes.
   This is the same really as what most people mean by 'experiential learning' but again, words like 'doing', 'practice', 'trial and error' are easier to think about. For example, you can plan in episodes of each of these into lectures, or tutorials, or student assignments, while it is not quite so easy to know exactly what 'planning in some experiential learning' may mean in any particular situation.
3. learning through feedback: 'other people's reactions' is the most frequent reply about how people account for having developed positive feelings. Human beings are a feeling species. Whatever we do or think, we have feelings about it. Ignore our feelings about learning at our peril!
4. 'making sense' of what has been learned. Students often say that the important step in this area is 'getting my head round it'. It's tempting to use the word 'understanding' for this, but it's not the best word. The problem with 'understanding' is that people don't really have a shared view of what the word really means.
   I prefer the word digesting for the 'making sense of it' dimension of learning. In its everyday physiological sense, 'digesting' means:
   • sorting out what's worth retaining;
   • building on to ourselves what is useful;
   • providing us with energy to keep going:
   • discarding what was just a 'means to the end' or the roughage.
   This analogue extends perfectly to mental processes as well. We need to help our learners to digest each learning experience they go through, and to become better-able to retain what's important and discard what's just passing detail.

An attack on long words!

In the literature about how our brains work, for too long we've had phrases such as 'active experimentation', 'concrete experience', 'reflective observation' and 'abstract conceptualisation'. No wonder people have often ended up confused about how learning really happens.

In fact, all these phrases really only amount to the same total as 'wanting, doing, feedback and digesting'. However, the long phrases are not really useful when it comes to planning teaching or learning. How many teachers can explain how they deliberately build in an episode of 'abstract conceptualisation' into a Thursday-morning lecture between 10:30 and 10:40?!

An attack on learning cycles

I've already aired some reservations about the terms 'active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation, and abstract conceptualisation' in that they don't mean much to most teachers or learners (or at least we don't really have shared views on exactly how-best to do them).

Various learning-cycle models are around which link these together, step-after-step. I don't think our brains work like this at all!

I maintain that human brains are much more sophisticated than merely to perform sequential operations in any particular order. Our brains work on overlapping areas all at once. Whatever we do, we have feelings about it. We're always making sense of the feedback we get as we do things or as we think things. We're always in the process of making sense of the experience of what we try to do or try to think. In short, all the stages in our learning are going on all the time. Certainly, we may focus on one aspect of learning more than others at a given time, but we don't suddenly stop doing one thing and switch to another.

A learning cycle approach to 'wanting, doing, feedback and digesting' may at first sight seem plausible, but what I've said about overlap applies once more, and we need to think of a model which takes this into account.

Ripples on the pond

The best way I've so far found to describe my 'wanting, doing, feedback, digesting' model of learning is as 'ripples on the pond', with each of the four processes in dynamic interaction with the rest.

Probably the best way of thinking about the driving force of the ripples is with 'wanting' at the centre of things, providing the energy for the ripple to spread. 'Feedback' is best shown as coming in from the outside of things. Feedback to learners comes from all directions fellow students, learning resources, expert witnesses such as tutors, and so on.

I think this model is useful in reminding us that all four of the factors we have explored about learning need to be operating all the time, and all four are interdependent.

Uses of the model

I find the 'wanting/needing, doing, feedback, digesting' model of learning makes a useful starting point in a wide range of situations. These include:

• training workshops for new lecturers: it's useful to get them thinking about how they can use large-group situations to:
  • enhance or create students' want to learn;
  • give students learning-by-doing experiences during lectures;
  • use lectures to provide students with as much feedback as possible from each other and from the lecturer;
  • create 'digesting' opportunities, helping students to make sense of what they are learning.
• staff-development sessions about assessment. For example, start by asking yourself how unseen traditional exams fare when thinking of student learning:
  • do they create much wanting to learn?
  • do students learn much in doing them?
  • how much feedback do students get after having done them?
  • how much 'making sense' or 'digesting' to they cause?
  Traditional exams don't come off too well in this analysis - but other forms of assessment, particularly student peer-assessment fare much better.
• workshops on the design and use of learning resource materials. Again, it's worth asking questions about how learning resources can best be made to:
  • increase students want to learn;
  • give them opportunities to learn by doing things:
  • provide them with feedback on how their learning is going:
  • help them make sense of what they're learning.

I'd like to know what you think about my model of learning. Please use the feedback form form to send me your comments.