DeFragging Our Brains . . . . .

In the book How People Learn it is stated, “guided learning and learning from individual experiences both play important roles in the functional reorganization of the brain.” I completely agree with this statement based on experiences from my own teaching over the last 19 years.

Two specific examples come to mind:

1. 10 years ago I had a student in my Television Studio Production course whose name was Ken. He was twice my age and had many experiences to share with me and the class. Ken and I quickly became friends. He had revealed to me that he was a Vietnam vet, that both he and his wife were cancer survivors and that he had been recently diagnosed with MS. He explained that when you have MS, signals do not pass between nerve cells at high speeds and that affects your Central Nervous system. He was taking my class because he and his doctor believed that learning things he had never learned before would regenerate or activate unused parts of his brain and nervous system which in turn would help him control the disease.

2. At an In- Service Day activity at Buck County Community College, the faculty was introduced to a gentleman who gave a presentation on how our brains work. He talked mostly about how folks with Dyslexia learn and showed pictures of MRI’s that were color coded to show us which parts of the brain were activated in problem solving. It was intriguing how the comparison of the MRI’s from the dyslexic and non dyslexic person showed that entirely different parts of the brain were working in each individual to solve the same problem. It was a prime example of how people’s brains organize material differently based on previous learning and experience.

Both of these examples show how different the brain can react in different situations and how it accesses and stores information based on experience and learning. When I think back to educational experiences where I feel I learned the most, they are all in a situation where there was hands on learning, an actual activity. . an experience. In college, we would take our remote production truck to cover the football games or another live event. The learning was intense, very active, charged and at times stressful, but it was robust and totally worthwhile. I am certain that many foundational items from that learning experience are accessed by my brain as I learn new things each day.

The concept of experiential learning is a very important one, especially to those of us in Higher Ed. We are faced with an interesting challenge. In many cases, we are the last line of guided learning that many individuals will experience before they enter the workforce. We need to find out what experiences our students come with, figure out how to build on those and we then need to provide them with additional experiences that prepare them for the road ahead.