“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” Louis Mercier
Introduction
I remember one particularly difficult college class I taught, and the two students
who were likely to fail. They, like many in a growing segment of learners, had short
attention spans. They expected more value in less time, but wouldn’t listen well
enough to find that value. Instead, they would become bored, and ignore the
learning.
One day, I heard the two praising James Cameron’s movie Titanic (1997).
Immediately, an incongruity hit me. Titanic is three hours long! Those would have
mutinied if I attempted a three-hour lecture. To make matters more galling, they
PAID to see Titanic. REPEATEDLY! Both students were destined to repeat this class,
but would not have willingly paid for the opportunity. Hollywood had succeeded in
capturing and maintaining those two learners’ attention, where I had not.
Their Titanic comments led me back to my prior career as a professional
entertainer, and the entertainment techniques I had learned while performing music,
magic and comedy. I identified two commonalities that the training and
entertainment communities share. (1) Both disciplines require a professional
delivery. If the delivery is amateurish, the entertainer is booed, anmemory, the
trainer is
ignored. (2) Both must attract attention, and fail if attention is not captured, or
worse, lost after it is gained. If no one notices the selected playing card, the
magician’s production of it has no magic. If no one hears the learning point, that
point cannot be remembered.
I next began looking for entertainment techniques I could apply to my classroom.
Each time I added an entertaining element, the learners responded, so I’d add
another. I soon noticed that test and class evaluation scores rose. The more
entertainment techniques I employed, the more effective the learning became. And
then, one day, one of those former learners, now repeating my class, approached
me. She asked if she could attend one of my classes again! That’s when I knew that
entertainment based learning works.
In this article, I share with you the theory that resulted from my journey. It offers a
different way to think about learning and a method for increasing retention while
simultaneously making learning engaging and fun. It is a combination of learning
and entertainment I call Learnertainment®.
To Leave or Learn?
The searchlight is always on. It scans the landscape, looking first left then right,
ever vigilant for signs of danger. This searchlight is unusual in its sophistication.
Like all searchlights, it scans visually. But in addition, it listens, it uses its sense of
smell, it reaches out to touch unknown items, and on occasion, it tastes the stimuli
in question. Perhaps the most amazing fact about this searchlight is that humans
didn’t invent it. It predates science. It’s the human brain.
When the human brain sees potential danger, it stops searching. It blocks out all
extraneous stimuli and focuses tightly on the perceived threat. Even those higher-
order components of the brain responsible for logic and the arts pitch in, refocusing
their energies in an “all hands on deck” effort survive. If the threat turns out to be
minor, the various brain components resume their normal activities… until the next
time the searchlight calls.
This dynamic is continuous; twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, below the
level of awareness, but always dictating human behavior. And as such, the
searchlight cannot be ignored. Ideas, and the intellectual application of those ideas,
are important, but are of little consequence to a brain that feels threatened.
Fortunately for trainers, teachers, facilitators and other learning professionals, the
brain has a secondary favorite input: pleasure. In humans, survival and pleasure
exist side by side. They are the Ying and yang, the left and right, the balancing
forces of our existence, and they are driven by the searchlight of emotion.
Emotion creates Attention
The word emotion comes from the Latin exmovere, meaning, “to move out of,” “to
agitate.” Aristotle believed that people are persuaded not just by logic, but also
through emotion. Plato agreed when he said, “All learning has an emotional base.”
And Carl Jung added, “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of
apathy into movement without emotion.” They were all correct. Emotions start a
chain of events that lead to learning.
For centuries, folklore stated that emotion was a creature of the heart. As science
gained ascendancy over folklore, emotions were thought to be a function of the
brain. Recent research demonstrates that both folklore and science had it right.
Emotion is generated in the brain AND the body.
Emotions affect our whole body, including our heart, lungs, stomach, skin and
immune and endocrine systems. If you think back through your own life experience,
you instinctively know this to be true. We have all felt the goosebumps of fear, the
sweat of nervousness, and the rapid breathing that comes from excitement. A “gut
reaction” is just that, an emotional signal from the gut.
The wisdom of gut reactions makes sense when you consider that the heart starts
beating in a human fetus before the brain is formed, and that, as the brain
develops, it begins with the brain stem. From the brain stem, the emotional limbic
system emerges. Next, the thinking brain grows out of the emotional regions.
Perhaps as a result, more neural connections go from the limbic system to the
cortex than the other way around. Certainly as a result, emotional reactions occur
before we think. We feel first, and think later.
The body’s up-front focus on feelings is critical to our survival. In situations where
life or death stands in the balance, split second responses are essential. Emotion
serves the purpose of identifying general threat levels. The emotional meaning of
the situation captures the brain’s attention and helps it make snap fight-or-flight
decisions. This response is automatic. Although people may be able rationalize their
emotions, the truth is emotions control them. Even when people overpower
emotions with logic, the feelings that created the emotion remain, often forever.
Attention creates Meaning
Once emotion has taken hold, the brain shifts into a heightened level of attention.
This heightened level is stressful. It cannot be maintained for long. To protect itself
from overload, and to free up capacity for the next potential threat, the brain
quickly determines the meaning of the emotion. It explores its memories, searching
for something comparable. Once a comparison is found, the brain concocts a
mental concept or model to explain the emotion. It then uses this explanation to
determine an appropriate response. This is not to suggest that the brain has made
an intellectual decision. Rather, it has captured the general meaning of what has
happened, and selects a correct response accordingly.
During this process, the initial stimulus is held in short term memory. Short-term
memory is that portion of memory devoted to the things that must be remembered
in the moment, but may not be significant in the future. Short-term memory has
finite capacity, and can only store items for around 30 seconds. Consequently, the
brain quickly determines the meaning of the information, and it’s potential future
importance.
Meaning creates Memory
With an item’s meaning defined, the event is codified. Information of little long-term
value is discarded. Information that is, or may be, meaningful in the future, is
forwarded into long-term memory.
It is in the long term memory where learning, if successful, resides. Unlike short-
term memory, long term memory has an almost infinite capacity. Once an item has
passed into the brain’s long term memory, it remains on file, waiting for the
searchlight’s call. The item, although nearly forgotten, remains so potent that the
correct emotional stimuli - a song, a smell, a visual, or a combination of sensory
inputs - can bring it flooding back into conscious memory. And often the memory
returns so vividly that it seems as if the event just occurred!
This depth of memory provides learning professionals with an advantage. Knowing
that an emotional stimulus remains powerful when locked in the memory, it’s in the
instructor’s best interest to tie learning to emotion. All that is required is a strong,
emotional trigger… like entertainment.
Entertainment creates Emotion
In today’s world, entertainment is everywhere. We see it in advertising, in news
programming, in “reality” television, in TV based education, and in businesses
ranging from restaurants to retail stores to theme parks.
We have become a society obsessed with entertainment. In the United States, on
average, we spend 5.1 percent of our income on it. That’s figure is comparable to
our spending on health care (5.3 percent), and is more than we spend on clothing
(4.7 percent).
What those figures don’t represent is the rise in entertainment spending through
the years. In 1935-36, we spent just 3.3 percent of our income on entertainment,
4.4 percent on health care, and 10.4 percent on clothing.
Where spending on entertainment is at a high, the rate of personal savings is at a
low, under 3 percent. After housing (32.6 percent), transportation (19.0 percent),
and food (13.6 percent), enjoyment trumps all. And the percentage of income spent
on food is misleading, because 5.7 percent of that category is dining out costs, and
a significant success factor in the food service industry is the entertainment value
(atmosphere, theme, and food presentation) a restaurant provides.
It’s not an accident that entertainment rules. As survival concerns receded from the
foreground, people became individually focused. In past generations, assembly-line
style orderliness and a “Yes Sir!” willingness to follow commands were valued.
Today, people instead focus on their individuals needs, with little adherence to the
dictates of others. They expect to be catered to, and will patronize organizations
that provide enjoyment.
In response, many organizations have entertainmentized their products. The result
is a culture in which the lines between entertainment and non-entertainment are
evaporating. Entertainment content is becoming the norm. Shakespeare was correct
before his time. The world IS a stage.
Learnertainment®
It is appropriate that the world is a stage. The entertainment arts were created to
compliment the brain’s searchlight quest for danger. At the dawn of human history,
pleasure, although secondary to survival, was always present. Pleasure had a
survival function. Food, sex, and sleep were required for survival, and thus were
pleasurable. The brain also required excess capacity for emergencies, but excess
capacity had to be exercised. The entertainment arts provided the exercise regimen.
Eventually survival was assured, but the excess capacity remained. Fortunately, the
portion of the brain that processes negative emotions, the right hemisphere, is also
attracted to the entertainment arts. People began to refocus this region on
pleasurable experiences.
Whether the forum was a nighttime cave fire, the Greek coliseum, the Elizabethan
stage, the vaudeville palace, Broadway, the movies, television, or most recently, the
Internet, a straight line can be traced from the receding of survival needs and the
ascension of emotionally based entertainment.
In this context then, the learning professional’s challenge is to match society; to
make classroom instruction equal in entertainment value; to lift classroom
instruction from expected to exceptional, from required to desired, from painful to
pleasurable; in short, to make it fun!
The key to fun is the solicitation of positive learner emotions. As we have
discovered, negative emotion rarely sleeps: especially in the classroom. When the
brain focuses on survival, it focuses completely. Worse yet, learning requires the
exploration of unfamiliar territory, and when the incoming information doesn’t fit
any recognizable pattern, the brain tags the information as a potential threat. The
searchlight stops and learning is blocked. Smart learning professionals draw the
searchlight towards positive emotional energy.
Here’s where Learnertainment® can help. Entertainment-based content relaxes the
right hemisphere, in effect, baby-sitting it, keeping it busy with things it likes:
cartoons, music, games, activities, visuals. Once the right hemisphere is playfully
engaged, learning can commence without negative blocking emotions. Attention is
riveted on the positive aspects of learning. In short, Learnertainment® distracts
them so that you can slip some learning in on them.
So the searchlight scans, never to stop. It’s no matter. Learnertainment® welcomes
the spotlight. It beckons that light, it draws it in, entices it to stop and performs for
it, demanding it pay attention. And with attention secured the spotlight shines
where it should, on learning.
Visit Lenn on line at www.offbeattraining.com
lennmillbower@offbeattraining.com
Lenn Millbower, BM, MA, the Learnertainment® Trainer is an expert in applying
show biz techniques to learning. He is the author of the ASTD Info-Line,
Music as a Training Tool, focused on the practical application of music to learning;
Show Biz Training, the definitive book on the application of entertainment industry
techniques to training; Cartoons for Trainers, a popular collection of 75 cartoons for
learning; Game Show Themes for Trainers, a best-selling CD of original learning
game music; and Training with a Beat: The Teaching Power of Music, the foremost
book on the application of music to learning. Lenn is an in-demand speaker, with
successful presentations at ASTD 1999-2005 and SHRM 2006; a creative and
dynamic instructional designer and facilitator formally with the Disney University
and Disney Institute; an accomplished arranger-composer skilled in the
psychological application of music to learning; a popular comedian, magician and
musician; and the president of Offbeat Training®, infusing entertainment-based
techniques into learning to keep ‘em awake!
