What happens in the brain when we learn?

It is important to understand that although the brain is “plastic”, meaning that different areas of the brain can change function, it is not the case that individual nerve cells in the brain fundamentally change function. Either nerve cells fire or they do not fire.

The changed function, “learning”, comes from the formation of new connections to other nerve cells, and/or the strengthening or weakening of existing connections. These changes in the connections between nerve cells lead to a change in when other nerve cells fire. If you think this sounds a bit technical, you can read more about how the brain works in the article about The Brain and Learning .

If you can remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, a concrete, physical change has occurred in your brain in relation to several connections between nerve cells; some were strengthened and weakened, and new ones have been formed. This means that in this context it is a biological condition that we are constantly learning. Whether it is so-called formal learning, i.e. learning in a teaching situation, or informal learning, i.e. when you, for example, experience the taste of broccoli for the first time, does not matter. Whether you learn that the capital of Italy is called Rome, or you learn a technique that makes you a better leader, the underlying mechanism is that connections between (several) nerve cells are strengthened or weakened, and that new ones are formed. This way of understanding the brain is sometimes confused with an idea of “learning as memory”, and is therefore rightly viewed as skewed from a classical didactic point of view. Learning is of course much more than what we understand by memory, but we cannot avoid the fact that when we learn something, the brain changes, and this is regardless of whether what we are learning is making decisions or recognizing broccoli.

Learning bridges

So when teaching or designing teaching materials, it is about trying to create a connection, or a learning bridge, in some way between the learner's existing knowledge, also called prior understanding, and the material to be learned. It may also be that bridges must be created between different existing knowledge that are simply not connected in the learner.
It goes without saying that it can be a bit of a challenge, especially because all people have a completely individual starting point for learning, and because you don't necessarily know their existing knowledge.
But if a learning bridge can first be created, it can always be expanded, a bit like a group of ants that can together make a bridge over a gap, e.g. between two leaves.

Typically, it is advantageous to be able to explain a topic in several ways, or to involve different senses or emotions, as there is then a greater chance of hitting one or more existing schemas in the recipient. In other words, there is a greater chance that you are trying to build a bridge somewhere where there is “someone on the other side of the gap” who can participate in building the bridge between known and unknown material. And if you succeed in building MORE bridges, the overall connection will be stronger.

Xie Xie - An example of a learning bridge

A few years ago I was in China on a series of longer trips. I was there for an EU project and had to teach a lot of Chinese. Since I don't speak a word of Chinese, I had an interpreter with me. However, I wanted to learn how to say 'thank you' in Chinese, so I asked my interpreters several times how to say it. I'm usually pretty good at pronouncing other languages, but I found that I had unusual difficulty just hearing the sounds correctly, and of course I couldn't pronounce it either.

Towards the end of the trip, I asked my English project manager how to say 'thank you', and he said it, with an English accent of course. Suddenly I could hear what he said; "sje shay". I immediately thought it sounded like 'chassé', like the dance step, one chassé, two chassé. I had been working hard on this for three weeks, and all it took was one incorrect, but more familiar, pronunciation to create a learning bridge between my existing knowledge and the new knowledge. ARGH! . Well, the good thing was that now I could both hear it and remember it. Armed with a schema for the word 'thank you', pronounced by an Englishman, I was now much better equipped to hear what it sounded like when pronounced correctly by Chinese: xie xie. On my next trip to China, I had my tiny “Chinese schema” to build on, and in three weeks I learned to speak what you might call “Taxi Chinese” (i.e. right, left, stop, etc.) plus a dozen or twenty other words.

When the material becomes too difficult

I have taken a number of online courses through so-called MOOCs in recent years. MOOCs are online courses where a huge number of students participate. The courses are offered by renowned universities (Stanford, MIT, Penn, Wharton, etc.) and deal with topics that I find extremely exciting. Here are some of the courses I have taken: “ Synapses, Neurons and Brains ”, “ Gamification ”, “ Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions ”, “ Visual Perception and the Brain ”, “ Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects ”. I can recommend each and every one. Everything about these courses takes place online, so typically all the material is conveyed using a filmed lecture.

In addition, there are some multiple choice tests and some peer reviewed essay assignments. All supplemented by online forums where you can discuss the material with your fellow students. All in all, a pretty good way to learn, although it requires a lot of discipline/motivation. If you want to try it yourself, you can find good MOOCs here: www.coursera.com and www.edx.com ).

Why am I telling you all this? Probably because I'm about to confess a failure - and my vanity tells me to tell you that I can concentrate on difficult material :-)

In the spring of 2016, I experienced for the first time that I started a course that I did not complete: “Machine Learning”, offered by Stanford. Super exciting course, well done and with a luminary in machine learning as a teacher, Andrew Ng.

I have a background as a programmer, so when I signed up for the course, I thought that since the course was about programming - which I knew something about, and about learning - which I also knew something about, it must be easy for me to get through. And I eagerly started the course.

The material turned out to be much more “math-heavy��� than I could handle. Not so much that I couldn’t understand what was being explained, but so that when I had to understand what was being explained, I really had to struggle to keep up. I got to the 4th week out of 12, and then I couldn’t really understand what I was seeing in the videos “deeply enough”. So I started watching the videos many, many times. Over and over again.

In the end, I gave up. I simply lacked existing schemas that could create a learning bridge to the material I needed to understand – and that was longer than I could compensate for with my motivation to learn the material.

Do you want to? learn more?

If you want to know more about digital learning and e-learning, you can start with our E-learning FAQ

If you are interested in the brain and learning, you will probably like these articles.

• The brain and learning
• Brain function explained with Facebook
• Neuro for nerds: nerve cells, axons, dendrites and synapses
• Grandma neurons, Jennifer Aniston and Catwoman
• Neurons in an anesthetized cat
• This is your brain on Tetris
• The mental shotgun
• Bias in assessing one's own learning

If you are interested in reading more about motivation and learning, these articles may interest you.

• Self-determination theory. The most important theory you need to know about learning.
• Coercive design – how not to design e-learning .
• Which learning methods best support motivation for learning?
• Your brain is NOT a computer - Predictive Coding
• Flick 2 learn. Why Interactive elearning is NOT always exciting elearning

Are you looking for help with developing e-learning , or would you like a course on e-learning where you learn how to create e-learning yourself - we can also help you.