Misplaced Mistakes

Mistakes are the food of learning, provided we reflect on them and consciously consider the errors made

Trial and error learning involves activity in which a variety of responses to solve a task are tentatively tried and some discarded until the correct solution is found and our mistakes are replaced with correct responses.

With no trial, there’s no error and no learning.

For most of us when we make a mistake during learning we feel bad at that moment but that feeling passes and often days later we can’t even remember what the mistake was, feedback can aid this process of misplacing mistakes somewhere where we won’t miss them.

Yet today, I spent all day at a call centre recruiting for roles that are difficult to source. I sat at an empty desk to write up some notes and overheard a clumsy feedback conversation riddled with negativity between a trainer and a new recruit that I had recommended several weeks earlier for one of these roles. Listening in I understood that the feedback was focused on just one process and a failure to successfully complete that process.

Rewards need to successfully motivate and reinforce learning

Dopamine is the chemical that is released in the brain when we are rewarded. It is also released when a person gambles and wins (or loses), or engages in a new course of learning and development.

Rewards release dopamine and this helps in remembering an event or experience.. For a reward to have an impact on learning and motivation it must be exciting.

For many new employees progressing induction and learning about new things is an adventure and incredibly rewarding,  the more motivated and interested we are in an activity the more dopamine is released and the better we remember it and the more we repeat those activities that were reinforced through positive outcomes.

Research shows dopamine reward signals don’t respond to the reward itself. Rather, the response is directly related to the reward’s level of surprise. When rewards exceed our expectations there is a dopamine response, but there is no dopamine response when the reward is expected.

So, armed with this knowledge how do trainers and learning designers make use of it?
How do we increase dopamine levels in learners brains so that they are motivated to learn and remember?

The answer is simple, design learning that is novel, exciting, enables discovery and reward. Design activity that enables a connection between a stimulus and a response and is which is followed by a reward to enable the strength of a satisfying experience to increase.

Positive reinforcement is one of the best ways to increase dopamine levels and assure retention of information; this positive reinforcement also helps us to create addictive learners.

The phrase “to make a mistake” implies purposive, conscious, planned action. That’s inaccurate: there are no intentional mistakes, no one consciously sets out to fail, particularly someone who has just secured a job that they badly needed. But when feedback is focused on failure and acts as a reminder of our mistakes we find it very hard to misplace mistakes, or replace mistakes, in fact we dwell on them and they become a barrier to learning, motivation and ultimately our self esteem suffers.