Accelerating Learning

Accelerated learning is one of the most powerful processes you can use on any training course.

So what exactly is accelerated learning?

Well, it’s a process that engages all of your senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste – to help you retain information more easily.

Based on research that suggests people learn best when they have a variety of options allowing them to use all their senses, it works by engaging different parts of the brain during training, making it a more natural process. For example, someone might be listening to something, but at the same time engaging another one or more of their other senses.

Accelerated learning follows the principle that learners don’t absorb knowledge, they create it.

I love this concept.

It is activity-based rather than presentation-based. That’s not to say that you won’t use presentations at all in your training, but you’ll most definitely avoid the dreaded death by PowerPoint. The idea is that delegates submerge themselves in the learning process and, as a result, are able to absorb many things at once.

Think about how babies and young children learn. They pick things up, touch them, move parts about, put toys in their mouths, bring them up to their noses and shake them to see what noise they make. A child often learns how the different parts of a toy work before its parents do. That’s because children learn instinctively and naturally, whereas as adults, we often lose or forget this ability, falling into learning by rote and other more traditional methods.

As we develop through the education system, we can also lose or forget our ability to be creative. I’ve often wondered whether it’s actually more the case that moving away from instinctive learning quashes our creative abilities. These abilities are still present, though, as is our ability to learn and store memories through our senses.

Traditional education directs us how to learn. Young children choose how to learn, and they usually do it through play and creativity, using their imagination and all of their senses without necessarily being consciously aware. And they have fun while they do it.

We all learn best when we choose how to learn, and the learning appeals to all of our senses. That’s what we aim to do during all of training sessions – engage all of our delegates’ brains and senses so that learning is more instinctive, natural and fun.

Think about a class or course you have attended where you felt the training moved too slowly, was too dry or involved too much sitting about listening to the trainer. How quickly did you become bored? Did you find yourself yawning, looking at your watch, perhaps even having to consciously force yourself to stay awake? In that scenario, did you find it difficult to learn? To retain the knowledge? Did you switch off and miss some of what the trainer was saying?

If the whole course was like this, how much do you think you learned? That’s the kind of training I so fervently want you to avoid, which is why I fully embrace the use of accelerated learning techniques. Now consider the converse of that scenario. The facilitator delivers the training in a way that stimulates your senses, so that you are encouraged to connect with and create your own learning, have fun and learn instinctively.

Doesn’t that sound like a better option?

How much do you think you would learn in this situation? And as a trainer, wouldn’t you rather have your delegates coming away from your sessions buzzing and re-motivated, rather than bored and demotivated?

The benefits to accelerated learning are massive. Delegates will:

• Be motivated to learn more

• Retain information for longer

• Retain more information in a shorter time

• Continue learning after the course

These are great learner outcomes. And the organisations you work with will benefit too, through more engaged staff, better use of training budgets, better service delivery, more effective teams, and a sense from employees that the organisation cares enough about them to invest so wisely in their development.

It’s a win-win.

So what does accelerated learning mean in practice?

It simply means delivering training in a way that appeals to people’s senses, stimulating their desire for learning. They get into a mindset of wanting to learn rather than learning because someone said they had to attend the training course. Then they learn without being consciously aware of everything they are taking in.

Accelerated learning in practice is about creating an environment where people are drawing the learning from you and each other rather than you imparting your experience to them. That can be quite a subtle shift, but so powerful.

Accelerated learning is a key element of the Engaging pillar of the Training 4 Influence methodology. If you’re a trainer and want to assess your own training against our methodology; or if you head up an internal training team and would like to assess your trainers’ delivery, please follow this link:

https://training4influence.co.uk/assess-your-training/