Accelerating the Learning Process

What if you could train more effectively and efficiently and have more fun in the process? Accelerated learning, or AL, will provide you with this opportunity. Accelerated learning is an exciting and highly effective application of learning theories that is expanding learning boundaries in schools and corporations around the world.

The goal, as described by educational researcher Lyelle Palmer, “is to produce a consistently positive learning experience that allows learners to acquire information and skills more efficiently and to retrieve, recall, or respond with confidence, quickness, and accuracy.” Has this instructional paradigm transformed the training field? So far, the results exceed previous norms across subject matter, age, or instructional setting. One practitioner, for Bell Atlantic, reported reducing course costs by 42 percent to 57 percent!

Accelerated, integrative, or enhanced learning, as it is variously called, applies leading-edge research to enhance human learning and performance. Accelerated learning can be defined as a multisensory, brain-compatible approach to learning that describes the conditions for learning and the presentation of material. Based on the work of Georgi Lozanov and Evalina Gateva, it is a holistic and whole-brain approach to learning.

AL develops skills and knowledge through the physical, emotional, social, and psychological aspects of being; it views the learner as an interacting whole. Whole-brain learning engages our senses, which provide input to the brain, and balances our two brain hemispheres, which process information differently. This multisensory approach recognizes the role of our sensory input channels and deliberately stimulates them.

A key distinction of an accelerative approach is the deliberate management of the “learning state,” helping to prepare the learner and to present materials in creative ways that enhance their compatibility with the various sensory processing modalities.