Best Books Nick Shackel­ton-Jones | How peop­le learn


We have to res­cue lear­ning.“

Best Books January 05, 2021 Jens Oppermann 3 min

About Lear­ning

We have to res­cue lear­ning”. This is the main mis­si­on Shack­le­ton-Jones under­ta­kes in his book How Peop­le Learn. And he starts at the begin­ning: with a new theo­ry of lear­ning that char­min­gly and pro­vo­ca­tively high­lights the weak­nes­ses of our gene­ral under­stan­ding of lear­ning.

Ins­tead of the widespread belief that lear­ning is syn­ony­mous with sto­ring and retrie­ving infor­ma­ti­on, Shack­le­ton-Jones advo­ca­tes the theo­ry that we asso­cia­te infor­ma­ti­on with emo­ti­ons. When we remem­ber the­se emo­ti­ons, we also recall the infor­ma­ti­on asso­cia­ted with them (Affec­ti­ve Con­text Model).

Taking this as a star­ting point, Shack­le­ton-Jones exp­lains why tra­di­tio­nal face-to-face trai­ning and e-lear­ning are often not effec­ti­ve and makes prag­ma­tic coun­ter-pro­po­sals.

Expe­ri­en­ces are the right choice when it comes to drawing the employees’ atten­ti­on to a topic. They address emo­ti­ons and make topics such as com­pli­an­ce, safe­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on rele­vant for employees. If, on the other hand, employees need help with their dai­ly tasks and chal­len­ges, the mot­to here should be resour­ces, not cour­ses”.

In the best-case sce­n­a­rio, resour­ces have not­hing to do with lear­ning, but with hands-on help. Resour­ces work simi­lar­ly to watching a video on You­Tube on how to tie a tie.

And, regard­less of whe­ther we are spea­king about resour­ces or expe­ri­en­ces, the star­ting point must be a dia­lo­gue to ensu­re that an actu­al task is prac­ti­ced or sol­ved. If this cru­cial step is omit­ted, the­re is a risk of run­ning into an inef­fi­ci­ent infor­ma­ti­on dump”, a clas­sic pro­blem of many e-lear­ning con­cepts that pre­sent infor­ma­ti­on in bulk but don’t sol­ve any spe­ci­fic pro­blem with it.

How Peop­le Learn is very enter­tai­ning and con­tains many prac­ti­cal examp­les, tips and even a model for crea­ting trai­nings: the 5Di Lear­ning Design Model. It con­vin­ced us so much, that we our­sel­ves now use this model (this is how we roll).


Aut­hor: Nick Shackel­ton-Jones (Lin­kedIn)

For­mat: Paper­back, 235 pages
Tar­get group
: Agen­ci­es and com­pa­nies

Lan­guage: Eng­lish

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