Connection makes it memorable
People who know me well know that outside of my professional endeavors I, Kacey, am a dancer and a mom. Elsewhere, I’ve written about the challenges I’ve faced in nurturing these seemingly incompatible sides of myself. I suspect others have had similar experiences and struggles balancing work, play and family life. However, what’s equally true about my multi-faceted experience is that, for me, each of these roles—educator, dancer and mom—are mutually constitutive. They bolster each other in very productive ways. I’ve learned how to be a better educator (course designer and teacher) by being a dancer and a parent, and vice versa. So, I want to share one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned and that was strengthened through these seemingly disparate experiences of mine. I also want to share how that lesson makes our curriculum at Deducers stand apart. That lesson is: connection makes it memorable.
One of the things I learned as a dancer is that if you want to make your performance memorable, you need to connect with your audience. This means you need to get them to make connections between your movements and the narrative you want to tell. You need to create an association between the movement of your body and an emotion that tells a story—an embrace means love, a sly smile means flirtation, a fierce stomp means battle or frustration. Similarly, one of the things I learned as a parent is that if you want your child to understand and remember something, you need to associate what you’re telling them with something they already know or have experienced. For example, if they remember how they felt when little Johnny smacked them on the head, they can connect that experience with why you’re asking them to refrain from hitting others.
All this makes sense, because as an educator I know that emotions influence memory and that the research has long shown that human beings learn by association. In fact, renowned psychologist D. Kanheman refers to the human mind as an “associative machine.” Point being, we assimilate new information into frameworks (a.k.a. schema) we’ve been building over the course of our lives. The more relatable the information, the more personal the information, the easier it is to assimilate, therefore take in and recall later on. This is why harnessing schemas and providing clear examples is crucial. Associations are like teeth that your students can use to sink into the material.
As a Philosopher by trade, I’ve never had a problem creating examples. The notoriety of my kind comes, in part, from the elaborate, and often ridiculously detached, examples we use to “pump intuitions” and highlight inconsistencies in people’s reasoning. However, teaching highly abstract theories, using highly unrealistic examples to late tweens and early twenty-somethings was always a bit of a challenge. I’d long heard and believed that, if you want to reach your students, you need to understand where they are coming from and speak to that; that’s how you’ll get them to understand the material.
True to form, it was my experience as a dancer and as a mother, which came several years into my career that really solidified my understanding of what that meant. I needed to find a better way to structure the material. Hearing about its importance wasn’t enough for my students. I needed them to feel it. Explaining key concepts and theories wouldn’t cut it. I needed to give them more hooks to sink their teeth into by carefully drawing out how the examples in the text reflect experiences real people, like themselves, have.
Associative learning for the win.
Today, a primary goal I have as an educator is to help my students build strong associations between their own knowledge base and the material conveyed in any lesson I develop. There is a science to this. In fact, experts in the psychology of learning like S. Kosslyn recommend starting with strong foundational material, explaining it using relatable examples, and building out from there. This way, everything links together and newer information is layered onto what is already known, not only making it easier for learners to absorb it in the first place but also making the learning more durable in the long run.
Building strong associations is key for any learner, in any setting, but the stakes are even higher for adult learners in professional settings. The material adult professionals need to remember is not just a matter of apples vs, oranges. Failure to learn it can negatively impact the entire organization they work for. For example, if producers don’t master the knowledge and skills required for their jobs, not only can this hinder their ability to advance in their careers, the repercussions can extend to the studio as a whole. Consider this, if producers don’t master creating effective scope proposals, this can tank projects, harm cash flow, and ultimately diminish the studio’s bottom line. If they do master it, this can increase budgets and make for a smoother schedule as well as process, and ultimately make the studio more profitable. It can also boost morale. As we’ve said before, in another article, if the creative studio is the universe, producers are at the center—they are the sun. Their role is critical to the health of the organization overall.
The importance of connection is why, at Deducers, we are meticulous about how each lesson is structured, crafted and delivered. We are dedicated to fostering our students' abilities to assimilate the material—to connect it to their own lives and the realities they face on the job. This is why we break down each key concept or skill into bite-size pieces, including tips that are highly relatable and easily digestible—our secret sauce for success—like using a five-point analysis to create an effective scope proposal. Cover all five and you can give the proposal a gold star. It’s also why all of our lessons are packed with real-life examples from industry experts who are familiar with the day-to-day reality experienced by producers pursuing our courses. Lastly, it’s why each of our lessons begins and ends with a minimum of fifteen minutes for questions– an opportunity to probe our students’ knowledge base and identify relevant background knowledge, so we can then tailor the content we deliver, in real-time, to bolster those links.
