Comments on: Higher Education Reinvention

By: Tone Disagrees without Toxins – Brain Leaders and Learners

Tone Disagrees without Toxins – Brain Leaders and Learners — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:14:11 +0000

[...] Reinvent even a small part of the workplace that is no longer profitable, by suggesting a practice that offers benefits from tone growth. [...]

By: eweber

eweber — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:34:33 +0000

Stu, how exciting to see that you will be working with Dr. Hoffman in this area, and let’s hope that work extends into wonderful whirlwinds of learning for more students. Congratulations on your continued initiatives for transformational renewal at university! What an exciting time for renewal initiatives for a new era.

Have you noticed that it takes risks to stand on the front lines of transformation, yet those who do find their rewards in life-changing student, faculty and leader benefits!

I’ve been in secondary and renewal work for 30 years and I am amazed at the enthusiasm that moves a circle that learns and assesses with the brain in mind.

As you well know, the key is to do the strategies – since it’s in the doing that the brain is rewired for finer solutions. If we can support your initiatives, we’d look forward to discussing college teaching and assessment renewal with evidence in higher motivation and achievement for all students. All the best to you and Eva!!

By: Stuart Patton

Stuart Patton — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:14:46 +0000

Ellen great post by yourself and Robyn, and a great reference document, everything you say is absolutely correct, based my own recent experience looking at the education market as, in some ways, an outsider. From pre-school, to high-school, to university is such a key time to train students how to learn, in their own unique way with their own unique brains. It’s essential we now incorporate what we now know from neuroscience into teaching, to enhance the learning experience, not take from it.

I recently did some marketing work for a business school and university, and was amazed to see that none of the lectures were using, what I would call key brain friendly learning tools, for instance mind maps, which have been around since 1974 !!. So I trained one of the lectures in mind mapping, gave him a book on mind mapping and now his classes are over subscribed, this is a guy who is a PhD, MSc, CSci. What was the change, maybe now his students have more visual aid’s to make the links and associations in their brains of new and existing knowledge more easily, they are learning in sync with their brain, not against it. So perhaps the starting point is to train the trainers in some cases on how to best communicate their subject content in order to get it from the short term to the long term memory.

I am just about to start a workshop and seminar program here in Indonesia with a colleague from the UK, Dr. Eva J Hoffman. Eva has created a program based around “Whole brain learning and teaching”, and we have written a supporting book called “Discover your learning intelligence”. So it will be interesting to see what sort of reaction we get with this approach…..will let you know.