Minister regrets lack of training - induction matters!

Jacqui Smith. former Home Secretary in the UK Government wished she had been better trained for the role. According to the BBC, in an interview with Total Politics magazine:

"I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of those skills," she adds.

There has been criticism of the way in which ministers are parachuted into departments, often without any prior knowledge or experience of the policy area, and expected to manage huge bureaucracies and multi-billion pound budgets.

She describes the way ministers are moved from one government job to another in Cabinet reshuffles as "pretty dysfunctional in the way that it works" but adds that it is "not just this government".

She says: "I think we should have been better trained. I think there should be more induction. There's more now than when I started as a minister but it's still not enough. I think there should be more emphasis given to supporting ministers more generally in terms of developing the skills needed to lead big departments, for example."

A poor induction affects employees at all levels of an organisation, not just "leaders". Being dumped "in at the deep end" is a lottery approach (with similarly weak odds) to effective performance and long term retention of staff. Far better to start engaging them at the point of appointment and providing 24/7 support through their first 90-120 days in the role. The only way you can achieve that is through provision of online services that give immediate access to quality learning content, up to date information, and the opportunity to connect with others in similar roles. This can only benefit the individual and the organisation through faster engagement, faster time to competence. This not only saves in training costs (while also improving effectiveness) but reduces the chance of catastrophic error.

I ran a webinar just a few days ago for the Learning and Skills Group on behalf of behalf of Brightwave recently on how learning portals can give new joiners immediate support from the moment they receive their welcome letter - not only can the person immediately start getting prepared, ensuring confidence and motivation levels remain high, but the organisation benefits through less lengthy induction training that when delivered traditionally often lacks context, relevance, personalisation to the individual's needs. Sky, the satellite TV company, are doing some great things in this area, and I'll be demonstrating/speaking about this in more detail for future webinars (let me know if you want details) and in Online Educa in December.

It is astonishing to think that senior government posts are being filled by people who lack the knowledge, skills and experience to do the job effectively from the outset. Unfortunately this is reflected right the way through all organisations, both public and private. And yet effective solutions are staring us in the face.

Surely everyone should be jumping at the chance to dramatically improve their induction and onboarding experience while at the same time save significant sums of money. If ever there was a case of successfully doing more with less, this is it.

Research merry-go-round up

I've been sitting on a number of research/news snippets which are all interesting but demonstrate how fluid the respective fields of neuroscience, cognitive psychology and educational study are. Sometimes it's hard to draw immediately practical inferences. Things are moving so fast that you can move from positions of contradiction, congruence and back to contradiction in a matter of days. This can be confusing, especially when you throw in the usual journalist demand for a sensationalist angle.

These recent headlines are a case in point:

Brain training claims dismissed

A Which? report states the obvious around some popular brain training software such as those from Nintendo, Lumosity and Mindweavers. It's still too early for anyone to claim categorically that their tools can, in isolation, lead to improved cognitive function. Other environmental factors always play a key role, which makes conclusive studies difficult.

Knitting can delay memory loss

A US study supports engaging in a hobby prevents memory problems later in life (by 40%). Keeping physically and mentally active is the key message - again stating the obvious perhaps?

Texting improves language skills

A positive report that "textisms" could be having a beneficial effect on reading development. Also the University of Toronto found instant messaging had a positive effect on teenagers' command of language.

Social websites: bad for kids' brains?

A number of reports alleging that online networking and gaming have health risks. Susan Greenfield weighs in on the debate stating that young brains may be fundamentally altered by internet activity - which is again fairly obvious. Why just young brains? Old brains are (almost) just as plastic. For more on this, Donald Clark does a great job of putting her expert opinion under critical review.

Digging deeper

With all this potential for confusion I find it's important to trace things back to their sources where-ever possible as there are usually more solid nuggets of information to be found. I'll leave you with one interesting piece on a subject I've posted on before - memory and sleep. In this study, it has been found that stages of sleep have distinct influence on the process of learning and memory. Communication between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex appears to change when moving between SWS and REM sleep. When disconnected (as it is during REM sleep) you are more likely to forget newly formed memories, explaining perhaps why most dreams are forgotten.

Newsnight - Paxman KOs Brain Gym founder

Just watched Jeremy Paxman do his usual combative stuff interviewing the US founder behind Brain Gym - in the words of the Newsnight blog:

Brain Gym is a programme used in hundreds of schools across Britain - backed by the government. It’s a series of daily physical exercises that are supposed to aid learning - by stimulating the vital organs. Many teachers - and many pupils - are convinced it works. But scientists are worried - believing that it amounts to "pseudo-science" and is misleading young children about the workings of the human body.

The report showing kids and teachers actively using the techniques were more disturbing than heartening. While I believe more awareness of how we think and learn should be part of our curriculum, there should be more care applied to adopting programmes such as these which appear to be largely unproven. The one bit of evidence available showed a link between physical exercise and calmer more focused classes of kids. But this really isn't anything new. I wouldn't be surprised if you replaced these particular Brain Gym exercises ("brain buttons" and "energy yawns" were to examples) with any other set of similar physical activities and you'd get largely the same results.

The other claimed effects were viewed with high sceptism by Colin Blakemore, Neuroscientist at Oxford University. Mr Dennison, the founder, was not at all convincing. Neither were the kids who were interviewed in support of the techniques - they appeared to parroting back phrases that you could see they didn't really understand.

It would be a real shame - and a huge missed opportunity - if we end up confusing neuroscience with pseudoscience. It appears that our education system and much of the training world is still too ready to adopt programmes that lack strong scientific foundations. Let's hope this doesn't obscure some of the geniune progress being made in understanding how our brain works and learns.

Sense about Science will have something to say about this.

You can probably catch a re-run of Newsnight on BBC iPlayer - watch it and let me know if you'd be happy for your own kids' school offering this type of tuition.

Learning is a health issue

I'm playing a bit of catch up after a particularly busy month - although the way things are looking that'll be the pattern for the foreseeable future. The European e-learning market appears to be thriving in stark contrast to the ongoing financial crisis and what looks like an inevitable recession in the US. As I raised in an early post - training budget shock - e-learning is now very much a mainstream option for training delivery and as general budgets tighten and cost efficiency returns to the fore (did it ever really go away?), the obvious benefits of making available persistent, consistent and trackable learning content are now fully accepted. The question has moved on from "Why e-learning?" to "Why not e-learning?". But the wider context is one recognising the ongoing and growing need to learn, train and re-train in order to stay relevant in a fast changing global economy.

The old...

In some respects, you could say that the world of Education and Health are beginning to converge. The relatively new fields of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and other studies of brain behaviour is starting to stray firmly into the more fluffy world of learning. This means we can start to view education as a brain health issue. This thought was triggered by a recent report by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reporting that rates of cognitive impairment among older Americans are on the decline, with education associated with better cognitive health.

The data comes from the NIA-supported Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a national, longitudinal examination of health, retirement and economic conditions of more than 20,000 men and women over 50. Researchers tested memory and judgment of a large subset of HRS participants to determine cognitive status in two groups of people, those age 70 and older in 1993 and in 2002. The scientists then followed each group for two years to track death rates.

They also looked at levels of education, income, and other factors in each group, finding that the 2002 participants were wealthier and had significantly higher levels of education, with 17 percent college-educated compared to 13 percent in 1993. The analysis found:

Cognitive impairment dropped from 12.2 percent in 1993 to 8.7 percent in 2002 among people 70 and older.
Cognitive impairment was associated with a significantly higher risk of death in both cohorts.
Education and financial status appeared overall to protect against developing cognitive impairment.
Once older people with higher levels of education reached a threshold of moderate to severe cognitive impairment, they had an increased risk of death over the next 2 years compared to those with lower levels of education.

While health treatment has improved for stroke, heart disease, and vascular conditions the researchers also suggest that cognitive reserve - our mind's resilience to neurological damage - may explain why the higher level of education found in the 2002 study group may be influencing the lower rate of cognitive impairment.

The New...

A commercial sign of this convergence between health and education is the growing industry in brain fitness, largely triggered by Nintendo's Brain Training success on the DS and Wii. Much of this is opportunistic bandwaggoning. However there are some exciting developments in Scotland which are reporting real benefits in the use of brain training exercises in a school setting.

A study in Dundee led by Learning and Teaching Scotland, as reporting by the Times, found:

“The initial pilot project that used the Nintendo DS and Dr Kawashima produced fascinating results," Derek Robertson, a development officer for 'games-based learning' at the LTS, said.
“Not only was there a marked and significant improvement in attainment in mental maths but there was also an improvement in concentration levels, behaviour and self regulation in the learning process.” Over a 10-week period, students in years 5 and 6 at St Columba's Primary played a series of 'brain training games' – including reading tests, problem-solving exercises, and memory puzzles – for 20 minutes in the morning when classes began. In a maths test at the end of the trial, their performance improved by an average 10 per cent, and the time to complete the test also dropped from 17 minutes to 13 minutes and nine seconds. Some children halved the time it took to complete the test while either maintaining or improving their score, the study found.

This is more evidence of Less Learning More Often at work. The success is leading to an extension of the study to 16 more schools - buying 480 Nintendo DS consoles for £34,000. This a small investment given the potential return, even if you scale it up across the entire country. Compare this to the billions wasted by Governments on over-engineered support structures that attempt to prop up the traditional methods of learning support to little lasting effect. Learning Skills Councils come to mind but there are plenty of others littering recent history - I only mention these as the Government announces their closure in 2010.

If we start to view education and our capacity to learn as a social health issue, perhaps we will see better targetted funding and real analytical rigour becoming commonplace rather than the exception it is today.

Our plastic brain - a game of give and take?

Neuroplasticity refers to our brains ability to change and reorganise itself through forming new neural connections. This is clearly at the heart of the learning process but also shows itself in the remarkable ability to move and redevelop brain function in the event of injury or damage.

Indeed, as we specialise and become experts in a specific skill or knowledge area, then the brain area used most to support this activity grows. As an example, this comparative study of London taxi and bus drivers (Maguire, Woollet and Spiers, 2006) found:

...that compared with bus drivers, taxi drivers had greater gray matter volume in mid-posterior hippocampi and less volume in anterior hippocampi. Furthermore, years of navigation experience correlated with hippocampal gray matter volume only in taxi drivers, with right posterior gray matter volume increasing and anterior volume decreasing with more navigation experience. This suggests that spatial knowledge, and not stress, driving, or self-motion, is associated with the pattern of hippocampal gray matter volume in taxi drivers.

Taxi drivers navigate around a city demanding constant recall of the spatial area, adapting constantly to traffic flow, passenger preferences and other factors. Bus drivers, on the other hand follow a more limited set of routes.

Another study (Draganski et al, 2006) focused on German medical students demonstrating that extensive learning of abtract information in preparing for an exam (and comparing them with students not being examed), showed that:

During the learning period, the gray matter increased significantly in the posterior and lateral parietal cortex bilaterally. These structural changes did not change significantly toward the third scan during the semester break 3 months after the exam. The posterior hippocampus showed a different pattern over time: the initial increase in gray matter during the learning period was even more pronounced toward the third time point.

I wonder whether this suggests that cramming intensively - usually frowned upon but still a very common practice - has a more lasting impact on future learning and memory retrieval than we have assumed to date?

But then how does this sit with the other finding from Maguire's study that the brains ability to change to suit the tasks and activities we engage in, comes at a cost to other brain areas not used as intensively? In this case, they found that the ability to acquire new visuo-spatial information was worse for taxi drivers than bus drivers. This is the effect of the anterior hippocampus decreasing in size.

Curious.

With the growing use of MRI and voxel-based morphometry we'll be seeing more and more of these types of study informing our understanding of how we actually learn.

Inaccurate claims of brain training benefits

I've been an avid supporter of Nintendo for the past two years or so, for their design prowess and dramatic success in widening the appeal of gaming. Indeed they're redefining recreational digital fun to include - shock - the learning of new skills. Brain Training in particular has been a left field success. I bought the game when it first launched in the US back in 2006 and was intrigued by the "less learning more often" principles built into the game play.

Now it appears the mainstream success is leading to some misleading claims. Sense about Science, a charity that promotes good science and evidence to the public has stated:

The big celebrity craze this year has been Nintendo’s Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training. The design of Brain Age is based on the premise that cognitive exercise can improve blood flow to the brain. Nicole Kidman said, “I've quickly found that training my brain is a great way to keep my mind feeling young” while Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, Phillip Schofield, Fern Britton, Zoe Ball and Johnny Ball have also endorsed the product. The Sun says Patrick Stewart is impressed: “Getting my Brain Age down to 33 has become a fascinating and stimulating way to relax.”

Dr Jason Braithwaite, Cognitive Neuroscientist, University of Birmingham has responded with:

There is no conclusive evidence showing that the continued use of these devices is linked to any measurable and general improvements in cognition. While practice at any task should lead to some form of improvement for that specific task, it is not clear that this improvement reflects anything other than a basic learned process for that specific task.

Now I would agree with Jason's statement in so far as learning that is not contextually aligned to the environment of eventual practice is going to be harder to put to valuable use. So arguably a lot of the fairly abstract exercises in Brain Training do not obviously translate into real world activities.

I'd be interested in learning about any research that is being carried out in this area as I can't help feeling that while Jason's statement is true now, it won't be in the (near) future as virtual practice on devices such as the DS get closer and closer to mimicking real life activities.