TLB #39🧠 The secret to memorable learning? Neuroscience has the answer!
A bi-weekly inside scoop on all the hottest events, juicy discussions, and oh-so-many other exciting things happening in our dynamic L&D community. 🧡
Hello Shaker,
Here’s all that you’ll experience in today’s issue:
💡Learning Bites: BACE-ing it right: Designing learning that sticks with Neuroscience.
🗓️ Community Calendar: Be a part of Wellbeing Hour and many more cool local hub meet-ups.
🔖 Resource Reel: A collection of resources on LxD, AI, Culture and many more.
🎤 Shaker's Stage: This week’s stage is taken by Erica Kim.
Learning Bites 💡
Have you ever wondered why some training sessions leave a lasting impact while others fade from memory the moment they end? What if you could design learning experiences that stick and create an emotional connection with your audience?
This week, I explored the course "Neuroscience-Based Learning: Strategies for Making Your Content Stick" by Anna Gullstrand, Chief People & Culture Officer at Mentimeter. It introduced me to the BACE model, a neuroscience-backed framework designed to make learning more memorable. The model focuses on four key elements: Blocks, Attention, Connection, and Emotion—each contributing to how well learners retain and apply what they’ve learned.
Here are my top takeaways along with what it means for practice:
1. Blocks: Small Chunks, Big Gains
Research suggests that learners can only maintain peak concentration for about 20 minutes. By breaking content into small, digestible blocks, and spacing these blocks out over time with moments for reflection, we can enhance understanding and retention. This mirrors the spaced repetition technique, which has been proven to improve long-term memory.
Concrete Practice: Let’s say you’re leading a leadership development program. Instead of delivering a 2-hour session in one go, split it into four 20-minute chunks, each covering a different but related aspect (e.g., decision-making, emotional intelligence). Follow each segment with a group reflection or a brief activity, such as applying a leadership concept in a real-life scenario.
2. Attention: Capture It, Keep It
Attention is often the most overlooked aspect of learning design, yet it’s critical. The brain is wired to focus on novelty and relevance. To sustain learners' attention, mix things up—use interactive and varied content delivery methods—videos, real-world examples, and exercises that reflect learners' daily work challenges. If you’re teaching remote teams, try breaking up synchronous learning with asynchronous tasks that require reflection and feedback.
Concrete Practice: If you’re delivering a session on conflict resolution, start with a provocative question: "What’s the worst argument you’ve had at work, and how did it get resolved?" You could also incorporate video clips from real-life workplace conflicts and ask learners to solve the problem as a group.
Consider the success of microlearning apps like Duolingo. They use gamified short lessons (around 10 minutes or less) paired with visual cues and interactive elements to keep users engaged. This constant variation in delivery keeps the brain engaged.
3. Connection: Bridge Old Knowledge with New Concepts
For learning to stick, learners need to relate new knowledge to their existing experiences and understanding. Establishing these connections strengthens memory retention and helps learners apply their newfound skills in real-world situations.
Concrete Practice: Incorporate activities that make learners connect what they already know to new content. For example, if you’re training a team on new software, ask them to reflect on their previous experiences with similar systems and identify differences. Group discussions, peer learning, case studies and reflection exercises because the weak signals in the brain will only break through when we relax the prefrontal cortex. Take advantage of this by designing for the brain to relax.
4. Emotion: Make It Meaningful
Neuroscience shows that when we tie learning to an emotional response—such as curiosity, excitement, or even surprise—it activates the brain's reward centers, making the learning experience more memorable. Emotional engagement fosters deeper learning and retention. Use stories, role-plays, or scenarios that evoke real-world emotions and provoke curiosity. You can even leverage tools like feedback loops, where learners can share their emotional reactions to the content as part of the learning process.
Concrete Practice: When teaching negotiation skills, instead of just sharing strategies, create an immersive role-play exercise. Allow learners to step into real-world scenarios, where they can feel the stakes—perhaps negotiating a pay raise or resolving a client issue. These emotions make the learning more personal and memorable.
By embedding the BACE model into your learning design, you’re not only delivering content—you’re creating an experience. It is an experience where learners engage their minds, hearts, and hands to fully absorb and apply what they’ve learned. This model turns passive learning into active, emotional, and deeply meaningful experiences.
That’s all Shakers! This week reflect on what creative techniques could you use to capture and maintain your learners’ attention throughout your sessions.
Coming Up Next
Community Calendar 🗓️
Looking for ways to connect, learn, and grow with fellow professionals?
Our upcoming events are just around the corner, designed to inspire and inform. Make sure you're on the list—register using the link given below!
Cool Stuff You Don’t Wanna Miss Out
Resource Reel 🔖
Avado: Learning and Development Design to Create Value on edx which teaches you how to design impactful learning experiences. Discover how to conduct needs analyses, craft objectives, build inclusive programs, and create a winning training proposal.
Our 7 Most Recommended Facilitation Books by Facilitator School where Daniel shares his favourite facilitation book along with the nuggets from each one of them.
Managing Learning Stipends: The Ultimate Guide by Offbeat offers a detailed guide that explores how much learning budget different L&D teams are allocating, ways to ensure learning stipends maximize ROI and benefit the business, and how to align the learning budget with the overall learning and development strategy.
Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint by Amazing if is a series of 20 mini-podcast episodes to help you navigate your career with clarity, confidence, and control. By signing up, you receive a free 20-day learning experience to accelerate your career development, learn about 20 skills in just under 7 minutes a day, receive daily nudges to listen to each skill and get sprint summaries and recommended resources straight to your inbox each day.
From Diagnosis to Design: the Power of the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) by squarepeginsigt where the author explains the nuances that can help us unlock the BCW's full potential as a systematic, descriptive tool for analysing and designing interventions.
Insights to shape organization culture for Success by Richard Steele and Brooke Weddle from McKinsey where they share their key learnings/insights from the Culturati: Summit 2C24.
8 Libraries of activities for experience designers by Anamaria Dorgo to make your learning sessions impactful by using the activities from these collections to help your learners form the connection and make learning memorable for them.
Can nudges be leveraged to enhance diversity in organizations? A systematic review by Jose A. Cervantez, and Katherine L. Milkman on how nudges can be leveraged to improve things for women and minorities in organizations and key findings regarding nudges that may be helpful to you and your organization if you value diversity.
5 resources to help you drive the adoption of Microsoft Copilot for work by Ross Stevenson.
Community Corner:
Shaker's Stage 🎤
Let’s welcome Erica Kim, Director of Strategy at VisionPoint to take the stage.
Something that fills your energy cup these days is:
-Going on solo walks in the morning to clear my head. Starting the day with that quiet space grounds me in gratitude and what I find most important in life.
A podcast others should listen to:
-"How I Built This with Guy Raz" is a fantastic listen into the stories behind successful businesses. What I love most is hearing about how people made hard decisions and learned from their mistakes, and how learning and careers can develop in both the most surprising and strategic of ways.
What is one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting out in your career?
-Forget 5-year goals. People change and the world is unpredictable. Focus more on self-discovery. We get so attached to titles and what we do, but there’s value in learning about who you are and what you stand for. The introspection is more valuable in wayfinding than most people realize.
What does being an L&D Shaker look and feel like for you?
-Curiosity, 1:1 calls, and long-term connection. I hold so much gratitude for this community and all of the mentors, coaches, and peers I've met along the way.
〜See you soon
Till then, keep spicing up your learning! 🧠🧂
Sejaal