Cooperation Produces Promotions

How Cooperation Doubles Learning Skills

College and graduate school are based on listening to lectures, right?
A 2-year Pennsylvania State University (PSU) study says forgettaboutit.

In kindergarten you played and learned with a buddy, and in you
corporate career, teamwork (buddy-system) is at the heart of success.
The key question for career promotion in Fortune100 organizations is,ncan this man or woman work well with others?

Listen to a Lecture is Boring

PSU says students learn better and improve their personal productivity skillsnby working in teams, compared to listening to lectures. Our research indicatesnteams of two, learn up to 89% faster and retain the knowledge up to twice asnlong. Big difference. And they enjoy the process as stress-free learning.

Remember back to school, and your constant fear of the instructor calling you outnfor not having the goods? The buddy system (teaming) is closer to playing a game and having fun than the anxiety producing vetting by an all-knowing, all-seeing teacher.

Professors Elsa Sanchez and Richard Craig (a team) concluded, students learnnfrom each other, and participate more in voicing their opinions in classroom.
Sanchez added, “They applied their new concepts, showed better analysis of problems, and could synthesize (organize) the new knowledge for practical use.”

When you eliminate anxiety and stress from the learning process, you foster creativity and independent analysis, skills leading to career promotions.

Team Learning Rules!

Team learning enhances clear speaking as well as clear thinking. You have toncommunicate your understanding of concepts in plain English, and give practicalnexamples as feedback. PSU found cooperative learning forces team members to become more creative and interesting to keep their partner’s attention.

There is more suppression of ego through conflict resolution in teams. Wasting the time of your team member is not tolerated, so members become better at time-management. All these skills are transferable to their career, with up to a 38% increase in personal productivity.

Dr. Sanchez concludes: students benefit from practicing real-world skills they will nuse in their career, while industry benefits from future employees possessing skills promoting personal and corporate success. Result, Lectures: 0.5 verses Team learning: 4. Competition and cooperation merge for buddies.
Three Learning Methods

There are three major systems to learn and they haven’t changed since
Aristotle (384-322 BC).nna) Observation: Mirror neurons in the brain create long-term memoriesnof activities we see others performing, even without practicing. Apprenticeship requires greater attention leading to an intense learning experience. Being a copycat leads to effective learning and making practical use of new knowledge and skills.nnb) Trial-And Error: how did you learn to type, drive a car or learn tonride a bike, and surf the Internet? You tolerated making mistakesnin order to learn. Trial-and-error consists of testing your options andnreceiving feedback about what works and does not. Your brain filesnthe errors in a neural circuit labeled – N.G. No-Good! It places into ananother circuit called – Use-This-When-Encountering-The-Same-Circumstance. The second circuit is used for long-term skill memories.n nc) Listening (lectures): A talented instructor can summarize what is nimportant to remember in 100-pages of text. When you are relaxednpaying attention, and motivated, listening can produce learning.
We object to the percentage of class work devoted to listening againstnthe amount of observation (teamwork) and trial-and-error.

The best of all possible worlds is combining a) b) and c) for optimal learning of long-term knowledge and skills.

Google: Teamwork Improves Learning And Career Success, 11.09.07, Science Daily.

How Your Eyes Read

Professors Schafer and Moore at Stanford School of Medicine, 11.08.07 publishednin the jou
al Neuron the results of their research on how the brain sends eyeballsnbouncing.

OK, your vision uses jerks and jolts of your eyeballs centering the words on you
retina on a spot called the fovea centralis. Who cares? The fovea on the retinanproduces shape, clear vision of the words in a sentence.

If you add moving your head left-to-right as your read across a sentence, and divide the sentences into clumps of words at a time (chunking), you can triple (3x) your reading speed and improve your comprehension for long-term memory.

If you think it would help your schooling and career to read-and-remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish one, keep reading.
Saccades (pronounced Sah-Cards < French sack)

The fancy (professional) word for the jerks and jolts your eyeballs makenreading across a sentence is called Saccades. The reason you want to remembe
that Saccade word is because these involuntary eye-movements are criticalnto seeing words and converting the symbols to meaning and comprehension.

These Stanford scientists discovered the site that generates these saccades, andnit never happened before. The location is called the FEF Frontal Eye Field.

So now you know, but how does it improve your life or make you look cool?

Head Movements

If you learn this baby-easy strategy you will become a reading genius becausenyou will learn up to 3x faster with equal or better comprehension.

Secret: when you read across a minimum of 12 word (wide) sentences let you
head relax and naturally move left-to-right across and down the page.

The scientific name for this strategy is: Vestibular-Ocular-Reflex or
Fresh Pursuit Tracking. All it means is let your head move left-to-rightnas you read because it moves the words into your Fovea space for sharp,nclear vision.

Does that mean if you do not move your head left-to-right, you lose claritynof vision? See how smart you are. Wait. My 3rd grade teacher never taughtnme to move my head while reading.

Old Ms. Harrison didn’t know about Vestibular Occular Reflex, it’s new.
Think about it, you are still reading with the 3rd grade skills you learnednway back then. Is it time to learn better skills to make reading more interestingnand less hard work?

Chunking

Secret: when you read across a sentence mentally divide the words intonthree sections (phrases). This strategy called Chunking (separating) makes nit easier for your eyes to move the words across your foveal retina.

You see the words with sharper vision and are forced to double and even triple you
reading speed.

What happens if you do not use left-to-right head movements and chunking?

You read like a snail, we call it snailing, and learn to hate learning becausenyou associate reading and learning with an annoying, struggling process.
If you care are tripling your learning skills, ask us how.

That’s it, see ya next time.nncopyright 2007 H. Bernard Wechsler hbw@speedlea
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