How to train soft skills online? Use the power of these 5 scientific brain principles
“How to use neuroscientific insights to bring your soft skills training online and make it work”
Does online have the same or even better value than classroom training?
That’s the main question in a world that went online at a crazy pace the past year. Especially for soft skills training. The right tooling will get you up and running, but how can we empower online within soft skills training?
We talked to two ‘brain ladies’: Katelijn Nijsmans from The Tipping Point and Ria van Dinteren from Breinwerk to dive deeper into the principles of brain learning and the applicability for soft skill training providers.
In this blog, you are introduced to Katelijn and Ria. They tell all about how they experienced the transition from classroom to online as soft skill trainers. In addition, they take you through the theory behind the five most important brain principles. What benefit can you derive from this as a trainer, while developing your soft skill training? In the end, you have to make the tools work for you, right?
The power of the five scientific brain principles
Katelijn Nijsmans is the Managing Partner of the training and research agency The Tipping Point which supports organisations in building and implementing 21st century skills. Her mission as a neuropsychologist is to bring brain knowledge out of the back rooms of science and translate it into the business world. She is also a lecturer at PXL and editor of the Dutch magazine TVOO.
Ria van Dinteren is an organisational expert and educationalist. Since 2010 she has been working on the applications of brain knowledge in organisations. She runs an organisational consultancy firm (Breinwerk), coaches (management) teams, an author of various books on neuroscience, a lecturer, editor-in-chief of TVOO and a keynote speaker.
When online soft skills training is the only option
Ria: “We started to investigate what neuroscience actually says about working together online, training together online and connecting with each other online.”
Katelijn: “Before Covid-19, we could never really imagine offering soft skills training online. Since March 2020, there has been a difference; 95% of all training had to be brought online, soft skills or not. Quite the challenge.
I can remember it was panic at first, since it was not possible anymore to train groups. Me and Ria put our heads together and used our investigative attitude to discover what neuroscience says about training, working and making contact with others online.”
Ria: “We immediately started with creating a Zoom account, started practicing and were determined to become experienced in working with these new technologies. The motivation they had during this process was ‘What is possible?’ instead of what isn’t. Next to that, both me and Katelijn had experience with parties abroad, especially in the United States, that had been doing this for some years.
This meant we luckily had people around us who helped us quite a bit. With customers asking to provide training online the experimenting started, what does and does not work. At first there were struggles with technique, tools and also quite important, the training design. It was very clear another design was needed and eventually with trial and error this was managed.”
Katelijn: “We wrote a book about how this went and our findings during this special period. The focus is about how neuroscience and the five most important brain principles work and can make an impact on your training online. Not only successes are being discussed, also failures and a practical checklist to get started easily.”
Ria: “For Katelijn and myself, it is important to be concrete as much as possible. How can I make sure participants feel safe, how to create the right focus and also how to take care of all the tools and having them working as they should? Brain principles are a very important part in that.”
"Ik ben veel leuker in het echte leven"
Katelijn and Ria co-wrote the (Dutch) book ‘I’m much more fun in real life’ about how online impact can be achieved with brain knowledge.
What are brain principles for learning?
In short, brain principles are neuroscientific insights explaining the best way to learn. Ideally described in a single word.
Or, the other way around, as learning professionals we constantly make didactical choices. Neuroscience is an explanation why didactical choices work. As simple as that.
For example, we incorporate a break during a training and neuroscience explains what happens in our brain when we take a break. It explains how the brain learns.
Five examples of brain principles
There are many brain principles. Ria and Katelijn selected the five most important ones when looking at online learning and soft skills training.
“If you set up a solid structure for it, participants of your online training or course are happy to share knowledge and tips with each other.”
Safety
Our brain has three different parts or layers. The primate brain, the mammalian brain and our reptilian brain, the latter containing the amygdala. The amygdala senses danger. Our fight or flight trigger. This could be real danger or symbolic danger.
It’s essential that people feel comfortable and at ease while participating in online training. This is not only important during online sessions, but also during classroom training. But how can you achieve this as a trainer?
One tip is to explain what the learners can expect before the meeting starts. Share for example a timetable and let them know when there is a break. During the meeting, you can give everybody a warm welcome; let learners know they are seen.
Also, try to give people a framework and explain the various elements of your training. Realise that open questions have a tendency to go their own way. This might be difficult to control when you want to achieve certain insights or need answers in a certain direction. Be sure to share the relevance: why should people listen?
Let’s zoom in into tools. Using technology has been a great change in training, also for trainers. Learn how your tools work, find tools that support your training and give learners the time to get to know the tools upfront. Share what tools will be used, do you expect people to enable their microphone, camera, are there props needed? This kind of clarification and explanation helps to build a comfortable and safe learning environment.
“Our brain is no dropbox”
Transference
Provide learners the time to transfer the information during the online training. Katelijn mentions Dr. David Sousa and his primacy recency effect. This principle of prime time and down time provides insights on what is needed in order to process information.
Prime time
Prime time means that the brain is capable of learning new information.
Downtime is needed to process the information. Based on different lengths of the session, more down time is needed as you can see in the image below.
20 min 90% prime time: 10 – 2 – 8
40 min 75% prime time: 20 – 10 – 10
80 min 62% prime time: 25 – 28 -27
How much down time do we need?
As a trainer there are different methods to shift between prime and down time. The first tip is to calculate how much time you actually have for prime and down time in your design.
Look at the layout of providing information versus methods to let learners process the material. Don’t start with a brainstorm, but choose to provide more valuable information and keep it short. During downtime you can introduce exercises and let people ask questions.
“There is a limit to our focus”
Within the brain, the prefrontal cortex can be seen as the CEO of the brain. In rest, the default mode network starts working. Think about the familiar ‘aha’ moments in the shower or when your mind is at ease. Think about how long people can actually stay focussed.
Grab the attention of your learners. Let them know why they should focus on you and your story. Ask people to put their phone aside and close all tabs that aren’t needed for the training. Get to the point, share new information first and watch out for the novelty seeking system: the fine line between: been there, done that and too much arousal.
Be critical on what information needs to be discussed during the session and what learners can do in their own time. Use hooks every 10 minutes to grab the attention. Hooks can come in various forms. For example use an appealing presentation, where each slide presents something new. More about the usage of presentation in the last principle.
“Our social brain”
Connect
Safety and connections are very closely related to each other. In our brain there are neurotransmitters. They come into play when you feel at ease, when you have fun. Feeling happy stimulates learning.
As a trainer you can use different methods to trigger the brain. Most important is to provide the feeling that learners are part of the group and that their thoughts and opinions matter.
Use breakout sessions for more fruitful conversations. Add some form of competition or game element to make it exciting. Let people have fun.
“Use all senses”
Senses
The multimedia Coherence Principle from Mayer, explains how the usage of multiple senses helps to improve the reception of the material.
Spend time to optimise your presentation. Often, presentations with lots of slides are a no-go. In an online setting, slides help you explain elements better. Take out the words that do not add any value. Use visible content that supports the spoken text. If this doesn’t align, it feels just as strange as badly timed lip sync. Be clear where the learners need to look when presenting.
