Collective Learning

I spent my career switching on brains. Of course, it took way more effort than flipping a chemical switch. In a class of 25 students, 25 brains have their own on/off mechanism.

Each one has a unique method for encoding memories. Broadly, there are visual learners, auditory learners, and kinaesthetic learners. Each of us favours one over the others. Every one of us uses combinations of all three.

If I need directions to your place, I’ll get lost if you tell me. I encode memories better if I read the directions or see them on a map. After travelling there, my memory was reinforced.

The combination of seeing (visual) and touching (kinaesthetic) via walking or driving reinforces the memory, hence the learning. If I see the directions but never travel to your place, I will likely forget them. My memory will return if I re-read the directions. Travelling there strengthens the memory.

When I played basketball, I needed to see a diagram of a play before we ran it. At training, I remembered stuff better if the coach drew it. Reinforcement of the plays came after we ran them on the court.

Some of my teammates remembered the plays through spoken instructions. But we still had to run them on the court to back up our learning.

During games, we recalled the memories and acted on them. The other team often got in the way of the recall, which interfered with the collective learning.