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.

Upbeat Learning Technologies 2008

I spent last week in London at Learning Technologies Exhibition and Conference. The general mood amongst the vendors and attendees I felt demonstrated a confidence in the future at odds with the wider economic gloom that the media and city types would have us believe. While the longer term impact of globalisation and an overstretched financial sector will clearly affect us all, I wonder if we might just see a change to the normal budget-slashing that the training industry usually suffers in a downturn.

The skills agenda appears to have genuinely captured attention at board level, while the role that technology can play to improve efficiency and effectiveness of training and development is now undeniable.

I delivered a seminar on my "Less Learning More Often" theme which attracted a good crowd and, I'm pleased to say, favourable responses. I am still surprised by the lack of awareness the training world has of even basic cognitive research. Just recognising the limitations of our short term memory, how easy it is to overload learners with too much extraneous content, and making appropriate use of a variety of media in our design solutions (whether for delivery in the classroom or through the screen).

Itiel Dror, Senior Lecturer, Cognitive Neuroscience at Southampton University delivered a great keynote in the Conference covering a similar theme using robust examples of how easy it is for our brains and memory systems to be misled and confused. These principles, if not taken into consideration in our learning design, work against us and result in much weaker learning outcomes. Itiel does well to grab attention - always helps when you have a real brain in a jar to pull out of your bag!

Here's to 2008 building on the successes of last year and a further growth in organisations demanding higher quality e-learning solutions.

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.