Podcast: Interview with Stella Collins Part 1

This week we bring you a two-part interview with Stella Collins, director and consultant at Stellar Learning and co-founder of Brain in Business. In part one, Stella and Ally talk about what Brain Friendly Learning means for Stella, how to engage learners and the difference between fun and enjoyment!

---

Click the green ‘play’ icon to listen now:

---

Links mentioned in podcast:

Brain Friendly Learning Group

Brain Friendly Learning Group Forum

Accelerated Learning by Colin Rose

The Accelerated Learning Handbook by Dave Meier

The 4-MAT Cycle by Bernice McCarthy

If you prefer to read our conversation, here’s the transcript:

Ally: What is brain friendly learning to you?

Stella: Brain friendly learning is learning the way people do naturally. As human beings we can’t not learn, we are built to learn. If we don’t not learn we would be extinct so it’s about exploiting the way we naturally learn and capturing that and turning it into a process and going with the way people learn naturally.

Ally: So how does that affect the way you design and deliver in this natural way what does that look and sound like?

Stella: For me it is a process that I use. So I use Colin Roses’ six step process and that’s all about having and getting people engaged in wanting to learn first; motivating them,helping them take in information in the best way possible for them, in as many ways as they can get information. Absorb it through their pores if they want to. Then they need to make sense of that information to work out in their head how that works.

Think about how they’re going to remember it, get some really good, strong memory triggers, memory anchors, so that when they go back into the world later on they can remember what they’ve learnt. They practice it to prove to themselves and the trainer, if there is one there, that they can do it.

Ally: I guess that this is where they gain confidence

Stella: Yes and the other key bit which often gets missed is the reviewing, so it’s keeping the learning fresh, keep going back to it, so that whatever you have done you don’t learn it and think that was really lovely I really enjoyed it and then just forget it. So it’s about reviewing it, rehearsing it, practicing it again in the real world, keep on trying it and revisiting it.

Ally: So that process, can you draw any analogies as to what makes that process natural learning

Stella: If you naturally learn something you want to learn it or there is a real need to learn it, for example you need to learn how to get out of a burning building or you want to learn flower arranging you have that natural instinct to want to and because you want to you will naturally be looking for or listening out for information, and because you want to you have already got that sense

“I know how I can make sense of this in my world, I know how I can fly it, I know what works for me, I know the best way that I learn”,

and the motivation is really important, because it was interesting to you and you related it to the real world that your working in then those memory triggers will be there naturally anyway and because you want to do it, whether you need to or a desire to you will practice it, so you will have a go at it because you need to and I guess that in the terms of the reviewing and rehearsal process it’s something your engaged with so you’re going to keep on coming back to it

Ally: This might be an unfair question to put you on the spot on, but you mentioned motivation and peoples motivation to want to is really important, so how do you access or stimulate that motivation to learn and my guess is that it is different for different people. Hints and tips?

Stella: Engage them in the designing of a training course, ask them what they want to learn, if you’re doing a customer service course find out what the people who are working, for example on a hotel reception, what they would like to do better, what are the challenges they face, what would they like more skills on, actually engage them right at the beginning.

Ally: So on the one hand you have the desired outcomes, the client, the sponsor will say this is the outcome I want from the training, but what you’re suggesting, in addition to that in order to make it work with the learning population, find out what they want to get out of it.

Stella: Yes, engage them in someway early on, whether you run a focus group or whether you just talk to a selection of them, not all of them necessarily and send them some information about what the course will contain and get their views on it, ask them to do a survey or they send you something back on it. One course we run, a writing course, we ask them to write us an e-mail telling us what they want to know, what they struggle with, what their confident with in their writing.

We then get a piece of writing which gives us an awful lot of information about that individual, and they are already engaged they have already started their learning because they have started thinking about it.

Ally: So what happens beforehand has a massive impact on what happens during.

Stella: Yes a huge impact. Then the whole thing about where do you hold the training, how much information do you give them about how to get there, people who arrive on training courses horribly late because they didn’t have a map. Make it easy for them, make them want to turn up and when they do turn up, make it welcoming, have somebody there to welcome them into the room, hopefully you, and make it a nice place to walk into, so if they do arrive feeling stressed or whatever allow them time to grab a coffee.

Ally: It’s fascinating because I know that the joining instructions are part of what we do, but the emphasis you seem to be placing on that is perhaps a lot more that many trainers would do.

Stella: I always think that if it’s a training course it is like having a party. If your having a party you send out party invitations that tells everyone everything they need to know, everything they need to bring, whether they can bring a friend or to bring a bottle, where it will be, when it will be, what to wear, so you send them an invitations and when they arrive, treat it in the same way, you’re the host or hostess, welcome them in, offer them a drink, take their coats, be a host or hostess, that’s what you are, they are there for the whole day, you’re in control.

Ally: Right back at the start you talked about the processes involved. I know we have had conversations in the past talking about coffee in training courses. People see the nice frothy coffee, but what they see is the nice cup and the froth on top and you were saying that actually is not the most important thing the most important thing is the great coffee, some lovely medium roasted Jamaican blue mountain coffee. It’s the coffee that is the most important thing not what people see on the outside, so tell me more about the importance of the training processes.

Stella: For me, part of brain friendly learning is that it is creative and that it looks lovely and that it feels great and it sounds great. You have nice visuals you have colour and music, sounds, whatever it might be, you have lots of light. So it ought to look and feel like a really nice experience, but you can’t get away with just that in the same way that you couldn’t ask for a cappuccino and find it was just the froth and no coffee.

So underneath you have got to have, and for me it is a process, it’s a process to guide people through the learning so they know there is a structure, you show them there is a structure effectively. It’s not just adding toys, having sweets in the room and making the room smell nice, that is part of the process.

If you don’t have the process then you loose something, if a chemist doesn’t have a process, if they don’t know what ingredients to put in or when to put them in, which way to stir the mixture, or which piece of equipment to use they end up with either an explosion or some green gloop and they don’t want either you have got to have a process and it is exactly the same with learning, if you haven’t got a process you don’t know what you might end up with. So people might have had a lovely day, but they might not have learnt anything.

Ally: So the processes, you have already outlined the six steps of Colin Rose would there be anything else you would suggest in terms of the process or would you break it down to the design process and a delivery process.

Stella: I personally use the Colin Rose model for the design and the delivery so as I’m designing I have it in mind and I’m working to that and as I’m delivering again I have got that in mind and I’m following through with the process. Other people use other processes like the Dave Myers process which I think is a fantastic process just not the one I happen to be as familiar with and not one I use regularly, so it’s a process for design and delivery and just happens to be the same process which works.

Ally: One of the things Paul and I are talking about doing, in a few months time, is outlining all these various models because different people use different models, Bernice McCarthy 4-MAT system, I really like that one.

Stella: I’m sure it doesn’t matter which process you use so long as you’ve got one. So long as it has been proved to work and you have worked with it, you have evidence it works and there is some kind of creditability, somebody has tested it somewhere to prove it works. There all in model, they are not absolute reality, I’m sure a cognitive neuroscientist would say that that may not be the exact process, but if it is a process that works and has credibility then it is a process. Take picking an exercise for example describe a process using masking tape on the floor just dropping that in the middle of a training course where you have had people sitting down all morning in a darkened room isn’t going to work.

Ally: Training becomes a series of disconnected games.

Stella: Yes and there has got to be a connection, it has to flow through.

Ally: It’s interesting because often when I’m doing train the trainer work and we will have new trainers who have made the transition from training at the front with PowerPoint to discovering about brain friendly learning who think “Wow this is great” often the next phase that I see them go through is, it just becomes about the fun and it’s great to see that change and it’s wonderful to see them have that approach to learning but sometimes it does become just a series of disconnected activities. They have fun, the learners have fun but behaviour doesn’t change. Then people say “We are not seeing any difference”

Stella: Yes and there is also a big difference between fun and enjoyment, or fun and something being enjoyable. Somebody said to me the other day

“I don’t think standing up and jumping up and down and getting excited about stuff is fun, that’s not fun for me, what I enjoy is to do something much quieter and reflective”

So I think the whole idea of brain friendly learning is fun, it can be fun but actually it should be enjoyable however people want to enjoy it, so you need to engage everybody, so it’s not just about the noise and the frivolity stuff, the stuff that looks like a party, it’s about the deep reflection and allowing people to sit and read.

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

If you liked this, you may also like these:

1. Podcast: Interview with Stella Collins Pt2 In this second part of our interview with Stella Collins, director and consultant at Stellar Learning...
2. Podcast: Interview with Carly Morgan Each month we’ll bring you an interview with someone involved in brain friendly learning. Here is...
3. Do you over-complicate the simple? The thing that differentiates humans from animals is the simple question “What does this mean?” Simple question,...
4. A design for design Part 2 In the final instalment, Paul explains how the subject of the training is like The Olympic Games....
5. A design for design Part 1 Paul reflects on a highly enjoyable afternoon with a client designing a 2 day training session around...