Brain-Based Research, Understanding by Design, and Museum Education -- or, What I Learned at Learning and the Brain....

Last Friday (November 18, 2011) I attended a pre-conference workshop at the Boston Learning and the Brain Conference.  The workshop was Jay McTighe and Judy Wills' "Instruction and Curriculum for 21st Century Brains."

The talk was an integration of the principles of Understanding by Design (UbD) and Brain-Based Research. In other words, how to design student learning based on how brains learn.

While the information is still "consolidating" in my own brain -- and I'm still trying to figure out how to apply McTighe and Wills' talk to how museums work with visitors -- two things did capture my attention and lead me to make connections between their work and museum education.

1) "The video game model"

A main component of Wills' portion of the presentation was that video games create intrinsically-motivated learners.

How do they do that? Because the basic design of the game and the nature of the gamer interact to produce behavior-reinforcing feel-good chemicals in the brain (dopamine). Dopamine is something the brain seeks. Through the process of being rewarded (through dopamine-release) or not, behaviors become patterned, memory is stored, and neural networks develop. [Ok, this is a vast reduction of what Dr. Wills was saying -- and she was drastically simplifying!] As Wills said, "The brain seeks patterns and pleasure."

Video games create situations in which the gamer gains pleasure.
Video games:
--challenge each player at the individual's level
-- provide immediate feedback
--reward success with greater challenge
-- provide frequent feedback on incremental progress throughout play.
Video gamers:
--buy into the goal
--persevere through challenge, despite an 80% failure rate
--use immediate feedback to improve
--consult resources for help
--will work hard for the pleasure of going to higher levels of play.

Anyway, for classroom instruction and for online learning, making the experience more like a video game should improve learning and instruction.

Would this be true of exhibit experiences and museum education I wonder? How would we do this?

2) The Power of Predictions

As McTighe and Wills explained, being able to see and to predict patterns (seeing how the experience fits together and matches previous experience) is a motivator. Making predictions and waiting to see the results of those predictions sustains interest (dopamine is release when the prediction proves true). The brain "needs to know" if the prediction was correct.

Buying into a goal and seeing patterns are big connects to UbD -- the student learns what the big picture is and how they fit into it. As neural networks are built on patterns, patterning works at a brain level, too.

These ideas finally gave me an answer to something that has been nagging at me for four years now: what about constructivist approaches? My sense has been that while constructivism and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) work well, the extreme versions do not. What's extreme? Never confirming students' answers.

Case in point. Several years ago, during a research on learning in museums class, we had a presentation by a museum educator who had been trained in the extreme version of the constructivist/VTS approach. She presented to us, the adult learners and professional educators, a set of wooden objects that she had used in her research and had included in an exhibit. While we came up with a ga-jillion questions and possible answers, including some excellent connected-knowing responses, we never once learned what these objects actually were.

To this day, I don't know if those things were spindles or not. In fact, I no longer care -- because this information is floating in my mental space somewhere and not connected to the other things I understand about objects and history. Frankly, my annoyance was such that I remember this experience more as a lesson on how NOT to teach. (See? There's that emotion in learning concept again....).

I have heard of similar experiences, most of which were pretty painful for the audience. Never knowing if one's predictions were correct or not caused a lot of agony for some groups of very bright and motivated graduate students in arts education. This has bothered me deeply.

If, as Wills and McTighe argue, the building block of "perseverance and memory" (i.e., learning) is the "instrinsic satisfaction of discovering that a prediction made in an unknown situation" is correct via "feedback that it is so," then somebody needs to provide that feedback. The brain needs to know.

On a practical level, this means that the instructor in the gallery does need to gently guide the conversation to a wrap-up place and provide confirmation of the group's ideas. (NOT force a conclusion, or just tell the visitors the answers right away - but find the pattern and give feedback about the accuracy of the prediction.)

On a broader level, this also means that there is a role for the expert in museums (and elsewhere). Elaine Gurian has asked this question in "Curator: From Soloist to Impresario" (part of Hot Topics, Public Culture, Museums The practical and philosophical implications of curatorial authority in museums are a "hot topic" in the museum field. Given the brain-based UbD approach of McRight and Wills, it looks like museums DO need experts to provide feedback...

...but those experts need to share authority and allow for participation by the audience.

Now, can anyone tell me what those objects were? Can I reexperience them in the video game model? Inquiring minds wanna know!!


For additional resources and the presentation slides, go to Jay McTighe's website's Resources Page.