One of the key things I look for when I’m delivering learning events is whether the people around me appear to be having fun. It’s the same with designing new learning environments. Part of my “Is this good design?” checklist is whether it offers both facilitator and learner the opportunity to enjoy the learning process.

I don’t know where this “fun’s important” approach came from but perhaps it’s a reaction to the long, mind-numbingly boring classroom hours that characterise much of my own education. I never wanted a repeat of those experiences so why should I inflict them on anybody else? Wherever it came from, I can’t remember a time when “ People learn best when they’re having fun” wasn’t a part of my professional vocabulary.

Today I was browsing the subject of the Personalisation of Learning when I came across a fascinating chapter by Manfred Spitzer. The chapter is part of the OECD book Personalising Education (2006) and is called Brain Research and Learning Over the Life Cycle. As the title suggests the subject area is what we know about the function of the brain and how this should translate into educational practice aimed at different age groups.

There’s a lot of good stuff in this chapter, but the real “Eureka!” moment for me came when I read the part that deals with the way we attach emotions to what we learn, and how this affects our ability to remember it (always a pretty important feature of any learning design!).

In short, when something is learned in an environment that allows us to attach positive emotions to it, we store the memory in one part of our brain, the hippocampus: where the associated emotion is negative we store the memory in a different part of the brain, the amygdala. The learning in our hippocampus then transfers over time to the brain cortex where long-term memory happens. Conversely the amygdala is the part of our brain where fast learning and future avoidance of unpleasant events is controlled – learning what not to do. Thus our reaction to the associated memory is not about creatively applying it to our future lives – it’s about never getting into the situation of ever having to apply it!

Not at all what we want as learning designers.

So it seems that, intuitively, I was right all along – people do learn best when they are having fun: and I’d say that that’s a pretty big message for anyone setting out to design any kind of learning experience.

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A great question is the facilitator’s most powerful tool. The questions we choose have very different purposes and lead us to very different results – so how do we go about crafting questions that will generate the responses we are seeking?

If you ask many people to describe to you different types of question and their effect, their responses are often limited to references to ‘open’ and ‘closed’ questions, sometimes with an implication that open questions are in some way ‘better’ than the closed type. When pushed on the question of ‘types of question’, the respondents may extend their thinking to include rhetorical and hypothetical questions and even the idea of ‘the daft (stupid/foolish) question’!

In reality, effective communicators frame questions in many different ways to help to enhance their own communication and to help them to understand the people they are communicating with.
Most of us recognise the impact of a really great question: we are stopped in our thought processes, challenged to analyse our response and given a new perspective on the ‘habitual’ thinking we are engaged in. Equally, most of us recognise the frustration of being asked endless questions, typified by the young child’s repetition of the single question, “Why?”

Too many ill-considered questions cause us to become disengaged, superficial or defensive in our responses but, as any good coach or counsellor knows, the right question at the right time can unlock extensive dialogue and change an individual’s view of the world.

Those of you who read my last post, about using our ‘Whole Brain’ in thinking, will see the link when I describe to you what I see as four valuable categories of question – each related to one of the ‘Whole Brain’ quadrants.

Our ‘upper left’, logical analytical brain leads to questions which are designed to build understanding of processes,
systems and problems.These are often questions of analysis and logic. They are the questions which help us to
understand ‘cause and effect’ and to build convincing arguments and business cases. These questions are objective,
business-like and neutral: they gather information and data and process it effectively.

In contrast, our ‘upper right’, imaginative and synergistic brain provokes questions which are designed to extend our thinking, develop new ideas and approaches and stimulate innovation. These are often questions which ask us to imagine or visualise something new. They often focus on the future rather than the past and on ideal situations rather than ‘real’ ones. They are of enormous value in breaking habits in thinking and encouraging a different perspective and new ideas.

‘Lower left’ questions are designed to create order, control and structure and to help us to plan activities.These are often questions which begin, “How, what, when, who?”. They are questions which organise and categorise our thinking. They
ensure that we pay attention to detail and think through our ideas before we commit to them. These questions are essential in confirming actions, checking understanding and planning.

Finally, lower right questions are designed to build understanding of feelings, beliefs and different interpersonal styles and perspectives. These are often questions which seek to explore people’s feelings and understand their responses.
They are the questions which help us to build strong relationships and to offer empathy to others. They enable us to
anticipate reactions to suggestions and to understand personal problems.

Developing the ability to formulate these questions appropriately is a learned skill. If you play around with the categories you’ll find some much easier to work with then others!

I’ve developed a set of facilitator guidelines and resources that enable you to run an interactive, 2-3 hour skills development workshop around the ‘Art of Great Questions’. If you’re interested and would like more details, contact RSVP Design through the website : www.rsvpdesign.co.uk and ask us questions about questions!

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We regularly run in-house and open sessions where trainers can come along to see how our learning tools work and consider how they might use or integrate these kinds of tools in to their development programmes.

Here are some confirmed dates for these programmes:

• London (Wallacespace) June 3rd 2010
• London (Wallacespace) July 8th 2010
• London (Wallacespace) August 19th 2010

To obtain a booking form please email kim@rsvpdesign.co.uk or call +44 141 561 0387

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We have found in recent months that holding a short 30 minute webinar focused on one of our tools has been a useful addition to the written materials provided on our website for those customers wishing to learn more about how our tools work. We plan continue these on a monthly basis, and will hold a Webinar on Webmaster on Tuesday 15th June 2010 at 2pm UK time. Please contact kim@rsvpdesign.co.uk if you would like an invite to the webinar as the technology limits the amounts of participants we can have on the system.

The Webmaster toolbox

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Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of right-brain and left-brain thinking. You know the basis – left brain logical and mathematical, right brain imaginative and expressive. However, you might not be aware of the ‘Whole Brain’ model developed by Ned Herrmann which extends this into a really simple but valuable way of ‘thinking about thinking’.

The HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory) shows how we use 4 different types of thinking in our everyday lives in order to deal with different situations and relationships. Very briefly, the HBDI breaks our thinking down into 4 areas which could be summarised as analytical/logical, organisational/administrative, inter-personal/expressive and imaginative/holistic. Each of us uses all of these but, as with most of our skills and competences, we prefer, trust and rely upon some more than others.

Knowing something of our own preferences enables us to play to our stengths and be aware of things that we might miss when we think through a problem or seek to take advantage of an opportunity. Knowing something of the preferences of others around us helps us to understand their priorities, avoid potential conflicts and work with them in ways that are most likely to produce positive ans satisfying results.

The HBDI model can give great insights not only into individual thinking and behaviour but also into how teams work. Within the core RSVP Design team of four, we have four significantly different profiles. Which is just as well, because if we were all the same the business would be destined to fail. Geoff’s profile suggests that he is ‘off-the scale’ in the types of thinking that allow him to be creative, see possibilities, make unusual connections and find alternative solutions to old problems. That’s great for our Design Director, but it is just as well we have Graham to apply logical, rational, critical thinking to balance Geoff’s innovative ideas. Kim manages our sales office so we are glad she has a high level of structured, organisational thinking – we need someone to control and pay attention to details. And my profile, pretty well balanced between the 4 areas, allows me to provide a ‘translation service’ and explain Geoff and Graham to each other!

HBDI gives us some great insights into our learning design. By taking a ‘walk’ around the four thinking styles we can check that our experiences will appeal to diverse learners and that our processes are complete and balanced. Conscious decisions, like selecting activities that will appeal to different types of thinking, and asking questions that come from each of the thinking preferences, mean that we present and review experiences from very different perspectives.

We find the HBDI model much more user-friendly and immediately useful than other popular profiles such as MBTI or DISC. We’re surprised that not many people know it. We think you should!

You can find out more about Ned Herrmann’s work on www.hbdi.com

We’re also planning a series of half-day, introductory ‘Whole Brain Thinking’ workshops and further full-day workshops for those who would like to apply the model to their training and learning design – ‘Whole Brain Training’. If you are interested in finding out more, drop us a line and we’ll help you to get as excited as we are about this integrated thinking model.

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I had an interesting discussion with my colleague Boyd Watkins recently – owner of Interel (an Action-learning devices company – see www.interel.com ). We were discussing terminology as we increasingly come together with our respective businesses – Boyd sees himself as a ‘challenge’ designer: the creation of challenges where individuals and groups can improve performance in teamwork, leadership and a range of other skills by interacting with engaging and intellectually stimulating ‘challenges’. He sees a distinction between this and the (US) ‘games’ industry which maintains a whole set of specific rules about what constitutes a ‘game’ and often includes a range of  ‘trivial’ props from rubber chickens to bean bags. I must admit I agree that the presentation of such props to a group of senior executives can pose a credibility problem for even the most confident and capable facilitator/trainer! Perhaps a more important distinction is that in ‘game’ play the tendency (much like early experiential learning in the UK) is to watch the participants play the game then debrief at the end – however in challenge or simulation ‘play’ we would advocate that the faciliator can intervene as coach if and when required to aid the learning process, and make best use of the most valuable commodity that a trainer has these days – quality attentive time from learners! The other conclusion that we came to is that RSVP Design is probably best described as a ’simulation’ designer in that all of our learning tools started life as very specific response to a client need, and we design our programmes and activities for clients with their very specific needs in mind, even if the ’simulation environment’ might look very different to real life.

However does all of this matter or is it just semantics? Games, challenges or simulations – what do trainers and faciliators look for when deciding to use learning tools?

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