What is “Accelerated Learning”?
Accelerated Learning is an advanced inter-disciplinary teaching and learning method. Based on the latest brain research, accelerated learning is a systematic approach that can enhance both learning efficiency and effectiveness while reducing training time and cost. Accelerated learning is based on the way people naturally learn. This methodology unlocks much of the human potential for learning that has been left largely untapped by other conventional learning methods. Many of today's leading organizations and educational institutions are benefiting from Accelerated Learning’s powerful principles.
Six Guiding Principles of Accelerated Learning
1. Learning is process of knowledge-creation, not consumption. Knowledge is not something a learner consumes, but something he or she creates. When learners integrate new information and skills into their existing knowledge structures, new meanings, new neural networks, and new patterns of electro/chemical interactions within one's total brain/body system are created.
2. Collaboration aids learning. All effective learning involves a social aspect. Competition between learners slows learning. Cooperation among learners speeds it up. A genuine learning community will always produce better learning results than a collection of isolated individuals.
3. Learning takes place on many levels simultaneously. Creating knowledge does not happen in a linear fashion. Good learning engages people on physical, intellectual, emotional, and social levels simultaneously. This allows a person to benefit from all the receptors, senses, and paths generated during learning. The brain, after all, is not a sequential processor, but a parallel processor, and it thrives when challenged to receive information from multiple sources at the same time.
4. Doing the work + feedback = learning. People learn best in context because knowledge learned in isolation soon evaporates. Humans learn how to swim by swimming; they learn how to manage by managing; they learn how to sing by singing; and they learn how to care for customers by caring for customers. The “real” and the “concrete” are much better teachers than the “hypothetical” and the “abstract,” provided there is time for total immersion, feedback, reflection, and re-immersion.
5. Positive emotions greatly improve learning. Human emotion can impact both the quality and quantity of learning. Training that is done in a stressful, painful, and dreary way distracts the brain from properly encoding information for memory. Learning scenarios that are joyful, relaxed, and engaging allow the appropriate release of chemicals in brain to support memory formation. In short, negative feelings inhibit learning; positive feelings accelerate learning.
6. Learning involves the whole mind and body. Learning is not merely "head-learning" (conscious, rational, "left-brained," and verbal). Learning involves the whole body/mind with all its emotions, senses, and receptors.