A very concise and easily consumable & accessible online course available through Lynda.com is “The Neuroscience of Learning” by Andreatta Britt, PhD where she introduces her three phase cycle (Learn, Remember, Do).
In the Learn phase, aligns the cycle with Bloom and Kolb models and then introduces discoveries from neuroscience how the areas of the brain including the hippocampus, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex participate in to retaining new information and learning new skills.
Dr. Britt highlights the importance of focus when eyes and ears are tuned in to a singular area of attention – this activates the hippocampus which is important to connecting short and long-term brain memory areas (see recent studies from Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson). Multi-tasking (also perhaps more accurately switch-tasking – when one is attempting to learn or do something while also keeping up with emails/texting) can result in loss of information. Dr. Britt actually renames switch-tasking as swiss-tasking because one might believe they are doing “two things simultaneously, there are a lot of holes in both”
Dr. Britt describes how peripheral multi-tasking (when others are engaging in doing two or more things are once) can negatively impact individuals who are single-tasking and presents that maximum focus sessions should be no longer than 20 minutes in length for any new topic.
In the Remember phase, Dr. Britt present 5 methods to connect new information for longer term retention
and describes the role the amygdala can play to prioritize the new knowledge and information where slightly positive feelings are found to be most influential to learning.
Games, quizzes, and positive social interaction contribute to positive internal feelings (Dr. Britt also suggests “gratitude, mindfulness and humor”), and reminds the importance of sleep and incorporation of retrieval sessions (as this assists with strengthening neuronal pathways – 20 repetitions gets things started – while 66 repetitions get to full ).
In the Do phase, Dr. Britt reviews how rewards encourage learning and how habits can be used to change behaviors….and how to break new learnings into smaller components that can be knit together using some sort of sound or visual cue and how to plan retrieval sessions that allow for recovery.
Many other nuggets are included within. All in all, “The Neuroscience of Learning” with its three phase model (Learn, Remember, Do) is a very easy listen that presents a method to tailor personal learning or prepping learning for others.