Neurolearning Package

Good day! Today I’m going to be talking to you about our exciting new Neuro learning Package. Now this is yet another example of how Capytech is pushing our capabilities and technology in the area of custom learning. Now, as always, I don’t just want to talk theoretically, but I’m going to give you concrete, I guess, examples and showcase to you actually what we built and the you can very quickly realize how you might be able to utilize it in your organization.

So, first of all, just a little bit of background on this. So, I listened to have been inspired by the Huberman Lab. Andrew Huberman is ofcourse a renowned neuroscientist and one of the areas the he explores in his quest to, I guess, optimize human performance is learning. And so I’ve been inspired and frankly taken a lot of the examples that he discusses in his podcast and in his writing into what I’m going to showcase to you today.

And so you’ll see in this presentation a few, I guess, different phases of how we’re applying the science that he’s so well summarized and the recommends on how we can utilize some neuroscience and studies into better learning. So, let’s get straight into it. So, here we’ve got one of our e-learning modules and the topic for this one I’ll just mute. This, is on social media awareness training. So, this is a standard, as we call it, gold module. I’ll just remove the sidebar there. And first, of all, what we can see is we’re asking the learner to wear headphones and you’ll see why in a moment. But the idea is we want them to be fully immersed in this experience. So we’re removing distractions. That’s the key purpose of this. So, let’s go into the next slide. So, I’ve muted the slide here, but what you’ll  be able to see and perhaps here we’ve started to play what is called alpha waves. Now, alpha waves are a great way of heightening attention and we’ll be able to increase the way that we’ll be able to retain information. If we’re starting a module and we’re a little bit sleepy and we’re not at this heightened state of attention, then our attention is not going to be as good, we’re going to be distracted and so on. So again, we’re reminding the learner here to put away their phones, turn off their email and slack and communication channels. And just for the next 20 or so minutes, focus specifically on this module. That’s what we’re all about here in the headphones.

Now, we’re playing these alpha waves where I’m increasing their levels of attention. And now, what we’re going to do to help them to build and be prepared for the module, we’re going to go through a Short Breathing Exercise. So I’ll just play this now. And so we’re giving them instructions in the narrations as well. And what we’ve got here, we’re explaining that what we want them to do is to inhale for 6 seconds in the nose and then a quick exhale through the mouth. So, it’s a six on the inhale and a two on the exhale. And now you can see we’ve given a nice handy counter here to guide people through this. This exercise goes for just about 90 seconds. It can be comfortable done at desk. You don’t have to make noise like I do, but within 90 seconds, alpha waves on, no distractions. Going through a breathing exercise, we can feel very confident that the individuals are going to be in the right frame of mind, in the right state to go ahead and be participating in this learning. So this exercise goes for 90 seconds and then we’ll start the module. So going on the next slide now we’re outlining the course objectives as we should. Down the bottom right, just next to my shoulder here, there’s a little mute button. So if they don’t want to listen to the alpha waves, then they can switch that off.

We’ve also got the narration happening as well. So, all the nice principles of e-learning, multi-sensory approach. We can animations, videos and so on. I’m going to move through this module fairly quickly just to focus on what we’re discussing here in relation to the neuroscience. We’re talking about the different elements there. We’re introducing the concept of fishing here too, and different types of fishing. So, this is a very, very basic module. This is being narrated as we go through the alpha waves of playing. At the same time, the narration here is building and teaching the individual about the content that we’re discussing. And so introducing fishing, and the we’ll introduce the other types of fishing as well.

So, the next key feature, and this is probably the feature that is not new. It’s something that we’ve been doing for a long time and that is what we call active recall. So, in a module already, what we’ll do as, as standard, we will have various ways of reaffirming the knowledge that we’ve done in things like formative knowledge checks, summative knowledge checks, scenarios, sometimes little games and so forth. Just good principles to reaffirm the learning the we’ve just been going through. So here we’re applying active recall where we’re going. Okay, what is the phishing typre that uses sms? And the learner should think about this. And then in this basic exercise, we reveal what that is, that’s smishing, so on for this one, for spear phishing and fishing as well. This could just as easily be a drag and drop exercise as many number of ways that we can do this. But the point is that immediately or very soon after we’ve introduced a concept, we’re having that reconfirmed in the mind of the learner, so that they solidify the concept in their brains. That’s the whole purposed of this active recall. I’ll talk a little bit how we would do this in a long track after we deliver a module as well. In just a little while too, but this is emdedded inside the module. Ofcourse, at the end of the module we can have a, a knowledge check, a summative assessment with the past marks and so forth. So, this is just complimentary to that. So now, I’ll continue on through the module.

And here we’ve reached the end, we’re summarizing the module. This is what we’ve learned. So, always we should be introducing what we’re going to learn. We go through the various stages of the learning. We have active recall, any formative assessments. We might have a summative assessment. We’re not having a summative assessment, this particular module, but we easily could. But what I want to showcase to you is inside of the module, the final element that we’re applying in our neuro learning package. And that is a short, as Andrew Huberman calls non sleep deep rest protocol or NSDR. Now, it’s been scientifically proven that if you are to take a nap after you learn a new concept, particularly things like languages or any kind of new abstract concepts, then if you take a nap afterwards, then those thought and memories are going to be greatly solidified in you long term memory, and that’s where this is coming from. So, if you learn something and you can go take a nap afterwards, it’s a great way to reaffirm it. Now, unfortunately, in the workplace, generally having a nap at your desk isn’t very well, highly thought of. So, instead we’re going to do this NSDR protocol. Now, as we’re telling the learner to do , they can look down and close their eyes if they feel comfortable to do that. And then this protocol takes us through about three minutes. It’s almost like a mini meditation. Now, we don’t want to, we don’t. Andrew Huberman doesn’t call it a meditation because there’s all kind of connotations and baggage with that.

That’s why we, we’re calling this an NSDR non sleep, deep rest. And so, we’re guiding them through this, this protocol, this activity where we’re having the individual focus on their breath. We’ll do a short body scan and this whole thing takes around three minutes. What we’ve also done, we’ve switched from the alpha waves now to the theta waves.

So theta wave assist in you feeling relaxed, which will assist in the efficacy of this whole protocol. So. The idea is we’re not having a nap, we’re not exactly meditating, but we’re relaxing our brain. We’re not thinking about the content. We don’t think about this point. We’re allowing our brain a chance to relax, consolidate what we’ve just introduced and son on. And this goes for three minutes through this guided NSDR. And then the learner can continue on after that, if they’re enjoying the state, which if you’re practice meditator, then you might want to continue.  You’re probably at work doing this, so you might need to get back to work then. But after three minutes, that’s when this protocol finishes. And that’s how we incorporate these neuroscience principles inside of thie neural learning package, which I think is pretty darn cool. Now, we can retrofit this to existing modules. Of course, we can build It into new modules as well. So there’s a lot of opportunity here to use this type of protocol in your learning. Now, what else can we do here? And I want to give you just a sneak peak as to what the future of this might look like. So we talked about active recall in the context of the module, and so we’re reaffirming the learning there.

But something that we know, we know is critical, is having s spaced repetition approach to the learning. What does that look like? So, must studies be often around languages. So, the idea is it’s like flashcards. So, then what you’ll do, you’ve gone through the learning. Now, tomorrow I’ll ask you some questions about the content, like the objectives, maybe the definition of phishing, for instance. And then if you get that right, if you recall that information correctly, then after perhaps three days, I’ll ask you again, and I’m reconfirming that if you get it wrong, that’s fine. That’s the part of the learning process. I’ll ask you again the next day. And so you go from one to three days, back to one. If you get it right after three days, the period extends like seven days to get it right then and 14 so forth. Now, eventually, once you get to a period of four to six weeks and between the last question and you can answer that correctly, then we can be very confident that whatever we’ve just taught you has been placed in your long term memory. So it’s something that you’re going to recall forever. So if you think about if you’ve never learned new languages, then this is a highly, highly effective approach. We can apply it to code of conducts, soft skills, technical skills and so on. It’s a highly, highly impactful way of being able to solidify learning into the brains of the learners, of course.

So this is something that we’re going to be building our and launching later this year, which will be very complementary to what I’ve just outlined to you here. I should say as well, not to get too much down the AI side, but these learning intervals that I’m talking about here between, when you forget something you’ve got called your forgetting curve, they are individual. So some people will forget after six, some people after eight. So if you hit, a person shouldn’t say hit, but if you remind someone at towards the end of their forgetting curve, then we’re making it as impactful as possible. We’re not asking them too early, we’re not asking them too late. And then the AI can train to find the optimal time to ask that person that question. So this is coming later this year and you’ll be sure to hear about when I launch it.

So one last thing, I’m happy to say that we’re going to have a summer promotion for this. As we enter the hotter months here, we want to get this to our clients, both new and old. And so for our five clients, we’re going to be including our neuroscience neural learning package, complementary into any new modules or any existing modules that they might have already developed with us.

So, if you’re interested in taking this promotion, as I said, it’s until the end of September, then just get in touch. Otherwise, if you’re watching this later or you’re going to be making your e-learning later, of course you’re welcome to take this, learning package and incorporate into your modules.

Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to discussing these with you further