Interview with Learning Expert: Dr. Spencer Kagan

Total Engagement Made Easy Through Simple Proven Brain-Based Strategies

T/D: You say that participants enjoy our presentations more, and we find presenting easier and more joyful when we align how we present with how brains best learn.  Are there a couple of simple, interactive instructional structures you can share with us?

Kagan: A traditional presenter might give some information and call on one person to say: What do you think?  Or, how would you answer that?  All the other brains in the room are semi to fully comatose.

Another presenter might say: talk it over with a partner.  Of course the high achiever in each pair says well goal one was…goal two was…goal three was… .  The other person goes, “Ah Hah”, while their mind is really somewhere else. 

A better technique would be a Rally Robin: you name one, I name one - so we're both accountable.  It gets all brains engaged.  Rally Robin is one of the 200 structures that we train.  We have structures that engage left hemisphere/right hemisphere, very specific parts of different hemispheres and so on.  We've been doing this since 1968 and in the process we've developed lots of instructional strategies that create full engagement.

T/D: What's the difference between a structure and an activity?

Kagan: Rally Robin is a structure.  So if I have you Rally Robin, the safety procedures that we've just gone through - you name the first one, I name the next.  That's an activity - it's structure plus the content. 

A different day I have you Rally Robin for team building or fun - name fun things to do after work.  That's a different activity.  So we work with a basic formula - structure plus content equals an activity.  That's why the structures are so powerful.  Any one structure can produce an infinite number of activities.

T/D: Activities keep people engaged, but you say achievement goes up as well?

Kagan: We have lots of research showing that academic achievement goes up among students; it doesn't matter whether it's college or kindergarten. In addition, self-esteem, empathy, social skills, liking the class and content, liking for instructor - we've got hard data on all of those things plus many more. The key is getting everyone involved and everyone cooperating in the e-Learning process.

There have been over a thousand research studies on cooperative learning and overall it's been the most investigated set of instructional strategies ever.  The results, according to analysis, are extraordinarily powerful.  For example, students who were about 50 in traditional classrooms are scoring about 78 in a cooperative learning classroom even though the classroom time is identical.

Frank Lyman, a good friend of mine, who invented Think-Pair-Share once summarized it very well.  He said, "A river takes banks to flow."  When you don't have structure there's chaos.

T/D: That's a great analogy.  Where can people learn more about your structures?

Kagan: Our webpage is one place to go and it's www.kaganonline.com .

T/D: You have books and tools and what other resources available?

Kagan: We have 100 publications of how to use instructional structures in all kinds of settings including how to become The Dynamic Trainer which is the most relevant for business trainers.

T/D: With a hundred resources to choose from, what's the one you think our readers should look for?

Kagan: The Dynamic Trainer.

T/D: Alright, thanks so much Dr Kagan, it's been a pleasure.

Dr. Spencer Kagan is an internationally acclaimed researcher, presenter and author of over a hundred books, chapters and scientific journal articles.  He's a former clinical psychologist and full professor of psychology and education at the University of California.  Dr Kagan is the principal author of the single most comprehensive book for educators in each of four fields - Cooperative Learning, Multiple Intelligences, Classroom Discipline and Classroom Energizers.  We’re discussing total engagement made easy through simple proven brain-based strategies.