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Assistant Prof. Joseph M. Saban & Adjunct Prof. Thomas P. WenschNorthern Illinois University Illinois, USA
This paper describes RSVP, which is a brain-based strategy for learning and leading.
For many of us, learning is often a social endeavour. We enjoy talking to each other to find out how - or sometimes if - our thoughts and feelings are part of the mainstream. We are searching for meaning in life, and much of the time our dialogue with others is reassuring because we sense that our own individual thoughts are drifting along with the currents of human experience. We have a sense for what we have in common.
As educators, if we can surface this common sense with our students, we also have an excellent opportunity to integrate new meanings with old sentiment, a fertile basin for retention. We can structure lessons that appeal to this common sense, using a lesson and presentation design format that we have labelled RSVP.
RSVP is an acronym for the four phases in our lesson design: Reflecting, Sharing, Visualising and Personalising. Our experience with RSVP as learning theory has evolved over the years of our teaching and staff development. In fact, if you have been teaching or presenting for a number of years, it ' s likely you have changed your style to be consistent with learner-centred theory. Because of this, we are reasonably sure that you use most or all of the phases of the RSVP design format. You may have a different name for the design, or you do not consistently use all the phases of the design, but you will readily recognise the components.
RSVP is a strategy that resonates well with children and adults. RSVP works best when you want to introduce a topic for discussion, and you wish to set the stage for collaborative learning. When we are co-presenting, we will often use RSVP to build trust with the group as we ease into the subject of the presentation. Participants enjoy the sequence of the design because of the social interaction.
To explain the RSVP design format, we will first describe the various phases that should occur during the lesson, and then we will suggest a few brain compatible learning strategies that can be used during each of the phases.
The RSVP design format consists of four phases, each of which is easily modified with brain compatible learning strategies. We use the acronym RSVP to help us remember the four phases, which are as follows:
Phase 1 R = Reflecting
Phase 2 S = Sharing
Phase 3 V = Visualising
Phase 4 P = Personalising
The phases follow a particular order. In Phase 1, the Reflecting Phase, the presenter encourages each individual participant to tap into his/her episodic memory and reflect on a common human experience. In Phase 2, the Sharing Phase, the individual shares those memories with a partner or in a small group.
During Phase 3, the Visualising Phase, the presenter facilitates a whole-group discussion based on the thinking generated from the reflecting and sharing phases. Phase 3 is called the visualising phase because a graphic organiser is used to illustrate the patterns of thought emanating from the whole group. It is also in Phase 3 that the presenter introduces the concept of the day ' s lesson, by integrating that concept with the current discussion. In Phase 4, the Personalising Phase, the presenter encourages the individual participant to make a transfer of new meaning to his/her own personal schema.
The chronological sequence of the phases is a familiar strategy to educators: attach new meaning to known meaning. Phase 1, the Reflecting Phase, is devoted to prior experience. Phase 2, the Sharing Phase, and Phase 3, the Visualising Phase are devoted to surfacing new meaning. Phase 4, the Personalising Phase, is devoted to transferring and applying the new meaning to the prior experience.
The objective of the Reflecting Phase is to focus the attention of the individual on a nostalgic remembrance that can be shared with the rest of the group in a non-threatening manner. The presenter or teacher is arousing attention and emotion to make the individual receptive to new learning.
In the Reflecting Phase, the facilitator chooses a human experience that each member of the group has in common. For example, the presenter may ask the participants to remember a day of kindergarten or a scene involving their first car, their first date, their graduation from high school, the birth of a child or a special birthday. In our illustration of RSVP at the end of the article, the presenters ask the participants to reflect on a hobby during the Reflecting Phase. The presenter uses a variety of brain compatible learning strategies to help each individual in the group recall the experience. In the illustration, the presenters have the individuals write answers to prompts.
In the Reflecting Phase, the presenter is working with the individual ' s episodic memory. The presenter is trying to unlock the episodic memory pathways, so the channels are receptive to neurological connections stimulated by the new material to be presented later in the session. In this phase, it is important that the presenter provides an environment so that each individual must undertake the reflective process. It is also important that the presenter avoids opening the door to any strong negative emotions, so the presenter stays away from evoking memories of tragedies or unpleasant circumstances
The objective of the second phase, the Sharing Phase, is to build trust for the meaningful exchange of ideas in a social setting. The social setting is an ideal learning environment because human beings can reflect on the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of others. In the Sharing Phase, the presenter gives the individual participant an opportunity to reveal a personal reflection in a non-threatening setting, where each individual can be prompted into making a significant contribution to the entire learning process.
The presenter can use any cooperative learning strategies to form the small groups. Partners or triads work well when the participants are not familiar with one another. In the illustration at the end of the article, the presenters have the individuals form learning partnerships.
At this point, we need to mention a particular strategy we use to form sharing groups when we teach a class or cohort. During one of the first class sessions, we will assign students to Learning Teams. Our goal is to create groups consisting of parallel levels of diversity within each group, so that each group member has an opportunity to learn from the different perspectives representative of the whole class. First, we will gather background information about each class member, often by distributing a survey during the first class session. After we have gathered the background information, we will look for patterns of diversity, so we can create learning teams according to the diversity represented within the class.
For example, when we are teaching a class of adult learners, we can usually rely (at least) on gender and age as ruling principles, so we can assign our students to learning teams where diverse gender and ages are found on the team. We think the Learning Team works best with about five members for a variety of logistical reasons; i.e. role assignment, consensus building, diversification, meeting duration, seating arrangements, etc. If there were 30 adult learners in the class, we would attempt to assign the same number of males and females to each learning team, and we would assign the same number of age distributions to each group. In this scenario, it may be possible to have three women and two men in each group, and three or more generations in each group.
Often, we can also use other ruling principles to further diversify the perspectives within the groups. Such ruling principles may include race, religion, education background, residency, or economic status. Again, the objective of the Leaning Team is to provide a non-threatening environment so an exchange of different perspectives can lead to meaningful learning. So ground rules have to create the parameters for a non-judgmental interchange of ideas. And we expect our Learning Teams to be safe harbours, so as instructors we do not evaluate (grade) Learning Team deliberations.
As the small groups interact in Phase 2, bonds form because the individuals are sharing a common human experience. Similar strands of human emotion will surface. The energy of the individuals will blend into the energy of the small group, and that energy can then flow into the whole group session where the content of the new lesson will be integrated within the same balance of emotion and attention that is occurring in the small group.
The Sharing Phase is a socialisation process. The presenter or teacher is intentionally trying to provide an opportunity for the individual to recognise that humans have developed similar feelings and thought patterns because they have undergone similar experiences. The presenters are conditioning the learners by establishing a mood of acceptance and receptivity.
The objective of the third phase, the Visualise Phase, is to bring group consensus regarding the reflection topic, to make the transition to the topic of the lesson, and to present the main content of the new material. We have named this phase Visualise because the presenter uses graphics to display the patterns of thought elicited during the course of the discussion. In this phase, the small groups share their thoughts with the whole group. The presenter or teacher uses relevant graphic organisers to synthesise meaning, so the individuals can see how their ideas fit interdependently with the ideas from other individuals. In the illustration at the end of the article, the presenters used a target organiser to show the causes for improved performance in their hobbies.
Phase 3 is the main event. The new material that is the subject for the presentation or lesson is introduced and explained in detail during this phase. The teacher or presenter may use a variety of strategies consistent with brain compatible learning to expose the participants to the new material, appealing to the different learner styles found within the group. In this phase, the parts of prior meaning are put together to form a whole new meaning, so each individual must be able to see how the new meaning will fit into the individual ' s own particular schema. That is why the facilitator will use some kind of summary graphic, such as a matrix, a semantic web, a Venn diagram, a table or a flow chart.
Using the common language educators use when discussing lesson plans, the Reflecting Phase and Sharing Phase form the hook or anticipatory set. The Visualising Phase has the elements of a lesson objective statement, a lesson presentation, concept development, guided practice and student feedback. In the Visualising Phase, the presenter will have to make a choice between using the discovery (inductive) approach or using an analytical (deductive) approach.
If the presenter uses the discovery approach, the presenter ' s task is to guide the group through an inductive leap to connect the prior reflection and the new meaning. The inductive process can often take longer, and because the learners are in a situation where they must discover the connection, the learners tend to become a little anxious. The graphic organiser can help bridge the inductive leap because often the presenter can use the same graphic organiser to summarise the reflective findings and introduce the new concept. As participants connect the new meaning to the prior reflection, the presenter can see ' the light bulbs turning on ' , and the presenter will often hear an occasional ' Aha! ' accompanied by a non-verbal signal of discovery.
In the analytical or deductive approach, the presenter uses a whole-part-whole structure in the Visualising Phase. This delivery method is clear and the message is forthright: ' first, tell them what you are going to say; second, say it; and third, tell them what you said ' . After the Sharing Phase, the presenter gathers the small groups or partners together in the whole group and begins the discussion by stating the day ' s lesson objective and how the day ' s objective can be connected to the Phase 1 Reflecting experience.
In this approach, the presenter transports the whole group over the bridge at the same time, not taking any chances that an individual may have trouble finding the bridge or navigating the bridge.
The objective of the last phase, the Personalising Phase, is to ensure that the individual attempts to transfer the new meaning to the individual ' s own prior knowledge. The presenter should insist that each individual converts the information to text, preferably by accounting for the new information in writing and/or speaking. The presenter is now trying to tap into the semantic memory pathways through sub-vocalisation.
The Personalising Phase is probably the phase most often overlooked by educators, with many educators relying on homework exercises to accomplish individual transfer. Rehearsal time is important during this processing period, and because the Personalising Phase closes the presentation, the facilitator has to take special care not to rush the reflection process. To force this reflection process, we will sometimes break the whole group back into the original small group pieces to encourage further dialogue relevant to the new meaning. Using this transition ensures that the individual transfer can be nurtured by the small groups, as the small groups ' check for understanding ' within their group.
But the key to the Personalising Phase is to have each individual participant realise a meaning from the lesson. If that individual transfer can be accelerated and enhanced by processing within a small group or with a partner, then small group breakout to debrief should be part of the design. However, each individual participant must still 'textualise' the new meaning to reinforce the neurological connection. Many educators satisfy the individual language processing requirement when they have their students keep journals or learning logs.
The RSVP design was influenced by the work of many different professionals interested in cognition, from those in the field of cognitive science and cognitive psychology, to those in the field of education and learning theories. Our design has evolved through the years with the premise that learning can be accelerated by a social environment. Also, the design phases have been modified to focus on the interrelationship of an individual ' s memory, attention, emotion, and retention.
As you would expect, many of the people whose ideas have influenced this design are educators. We first became interested in metacognition from Art Costa ' s ASCD publication of Developing the Mind in 1985. The concept of ' reciprocity ' from Jerome Bruner ' s Toward a Theory of Instruction leads us to believe that learning is a deep social need, and we believe RSVP addresses that need. Critical thinking advocates, such as Lee Winocur, helped shape the RSVP design structure. It was during awareness sessions for Winocur ' s I.M.P.A.C.T. that we began using RSVP formats in staff development presentations.
Johnson and Johnson ' s Cooperative Learning encouraged the social environment that provides the structure for the design. Our communication with Pat Wolfe during her current work with Lessons Learned from Brain Research is consistent with RSVP. Eric Jensen ' s workshops and Brain Expo Conferences were, and continue to be, excellent idea generators for anyone interested in brain compatible learning. The books and presentations by Renate and Geoffrey Caine support the socialisation process, as well as the strategies.
Cognitive scientist Marian Diamond has helped us realise that the learning environment can have an impact on neuroplasticity. Daniel Schacter ' s book on the memory, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past, is important background reading for current memory theory. Robert Sylwester ' s material on attention and emotion has had a significant influence on the RSVP design. Robert Sapolsky ' s Why Zebras Don ' t Get Ulcers also supplied us with information on stress and learning.
We believe that the RSVP design format is effective because the different phases in the design work toward efficiently integrating specific neurological systems within the learner. RSVP phases should activate the individual ' s working memory to associate new meaning for attachment to the long-term memory. Beginning with the Reflection Phase, the presenter is opening the implicit emotional memory facilitated by the amygdala and the explicit episodic memory controlled in the hippocampus. Ending with the Personalising Phase, the presenter is guiding the transfer of the new meaning toward the explicit episodic and semantic lanes of the declarative memory. During the RSVP lesson, we are simply helping the learner attach new meaning to prior experience. However, we are making a concerted effort to make the attachment stronger by making the connection a socially acceptable and emotional attachment.
The RSVP design format lends itself freely to brain compatible learning strategies. The presenter can use a variety of strategies within each phase, and the combination of strategies integrated throughout the entire presentation can be creatively modified to fit the needs of the audience. Each phase is listed below with suggestions of strategies that can be used during the phase.
The objective of the Reflection Phase is to focus the attention of the individual on a nostalgic remembrance that can be shared with the rest of the group in a non-threatening manner. The presenter ' s job is to make sure that each individual in the room is responsible for going through the reflection process.
Some suggested presentation strategies for the Reflection Phase follow. Instructors will be able to customise many imaginative techniques to accomplish their situational needs:
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVE: The presenter has each individual write a short account of an experience. The writing will help the individual retrieve the information activating the episodic memory. For example, students could recall a recent great time with a best friend, or a story revolving around a favourite expression of art, music, film, or literature.
VISUALISATION: The presenter has the individuals close their eyes, as the presenter guides them back to a past experience. The presenter has the individuals concentrate on the sensory detail connected with the experience by trying to encourage the individuals to remember the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of the experience.
QUESTION PROMPTS: The presenter distributes a prepared worksheet for the individuals aimed at eliciting the reflections key to the experience.
STORY MAP: The presenter distributes a chronological graphic organiser that the individual can fill out, related to the experience.
SYNECTIC: Presenter asks individuals to symbolise their experience with a metaphor.
ATTITUDE SURVEY: Presenter prepares an attitude survey targeting emotions that will trigger the reflection.
AUDIO-VISUAL: The presenter will play music or show scenes meant to stir recall of a time or event.
The objective of the Sharing Phase is to promote trust within small groups that will provide energy for the whole group discussion. Sympathise is Greek for ' feel together ' and in the Sharing Phase, the presenter is providing an environment where the individuals will see that their individual reflective experiences flow with the current of common human experience. In Discover Your Brain: Emotion and Attention, Bob Sylwester has mentioned that the mood of the learner is important for the learner ' s attention to the learning experience. As the individuals share their common experiences, a common attitude receptive to new learning will rise.
Some suggested presentation strategies for the Sharing Phase follow. Instructors will be able to create many other techniques to fit their presentation.
SEEK, SIGN AND SHARE: Individuals seek out others to share their stories and sign off each other ' s interview sheet.
SAVE THE LAST WORD FOR ME: Small group shares experiences. Each individual in the group is allowed the same predetermined amount of time to speak, and other members of the group must take note silently. The first person to speak in the rotation synthesises the group pattern after the rotation is finished, hence ' save the last word for me ' .
THINK-PAIR-SHARE: After the reflective exercise in the Remember Phase, the individual shares his/her reflection with someone sitting nearby.
LEARNING PARTNER: Instructor randomly assigns pairs as learning partners. Eric Jensen has his learning partners share their reflection while taking a walk.
COOPERATIVE LEARNING GROUPS: Many techniques instructors use for cooperative learning will serve as a good transition from the Reflecting Phase to the Visualising Phase.
The objective of the Visualising Phase is to bring whole group consensus regarding the reflection topic, to make the transition to the topic of the lesson, and to present the main content of the new material. Because the ideas of the individuals are being connected to each other in a reciprocal fashion, it makes sense that the Visualising Phase includes a graphic organiser to represent the synthesis of the ideas from the entire group. For illustrations of a variety of graphic organisers, review Robin Fogarty ' s Brain Compatible Classrooms and Designing Brain Compatible Learning by Terence Parry and Gayle Gregory.
Depending on the time restrictions, Group Presentations can be used during the Visualising Phase. Each small group is asked to summarise their thinking for the whole group. Typically, each group will construct a graphic to represent their group ' s process, and that graphic will be used during their presentation to the whole group. Many times, the graphic will be publicly displayed, such as a butcher-block paper taped to the room wall.
The facilitators can accelerate the Visualising Phase by soliciting answers from individuals during the whole group discussion using Direct Questioning. In the Direct Questioning technique, the presenter first asks the question of the whole group. Next, the presenter allows enough time for individuals to think of a response and then, the presenter will arbitrarily call on an individual for the response. During the individual ' s response, the presenter will use communication techniques to encourage the individual to elaborate on the response. The presenter will allow appropriate time for the whole group to reflect on the individual ' s response, and the presenter will then continue the discussion by asking another individual to comment on the response, or the presenter will begin the process over again by asking a related question to the whole group. During the discussion, the presenter uses a graphic organiser to keep track of the thought patterns of the whole group.
Direct Questioning can also be a lengthy process because it is the job of the presenter to make sure as many individuals as possible deliver responses. With a large group, the presenter should sweep the audience and make sure each area in the room has had a chance to respond.
Because many presentations are restricted by time, facilitators often will streamline a more structured discussion strategy. The Reflecting Phase is for individual reflection, the Sharing Phase is for small group confidence building and the Visualising Phase is for whole group consensus. If the presenters have tended to the Reflecting Phase and the Sharing Phase, whole-group consensus can usually be reached very quickly. Again, the task of the presenter is to make sure the information is summarised with a graphic organiser so that the new information can be attached to the consensus information.
The objective of the Personalising Phase is to ensure that the individual attempts to transfer the new meaning to the individual ' s own prior knowledge, to build a relationship between ideas. To attach new meaning to old meaning, so that all meaning can be easily retrieved, is the primary goal of teaching. RSVP is structured so that the learner can use a common emotional experience as a cue and placeholder for retrieving the new meaning.
Techniques that force the learner to put the new meaning into the learner ' s own words are good strategies for the Personalising Phase. Listed below are transfer strategies many teachers have been using for years.
LEARNING LOG: Students write their reflections of the lesson in a journal entry before they leave the presentation. The presenter will usually provide the parameters for the entry with question prompts. What did I learn? How do I feel about what I learned? How can I apply the new information to my own life?
SEMANTIC WEBBING: The learner creates his/her own graphic organiser placing the new meaning into a personalised graphic.
COMPUTER-AIDED GRAPHICS: Software programs (such as Inspiration) are available that accelerate the graphics of idea webbing. These software programs allow the user to manipulate the ideas into a variety of graphic relationships.
DIALOGUE WITH PARTNER: Learners can voice their meanings by sharing insights with a learning partner. Each learner is forced to summarise the new meaning into his/her own words.
3-2-1 ACTIVITY: Learner lists three things learned, two things the learner will share, and one thing the learner will apply.
PLUSES AND WISHES: Participant receives post-it notes of two different colours. Participant writes down positive comments about presentation on one-colour post-it notes and different comments on other colour post-it. Participants then post notes on the bulletin board for whole group to see.
Strategies for RSVP are learner-centred activities. For more strategies, review the brain-based learning strategies promoted by brain compatible learning advocates such as Pat Wolfe, Eric Jensen, Robin Fogarty, Terence Parry & Gayle Gregory, Geoffrey and Renate Caine, Sam Crowell, David Sousa, and Marcus Conyers.
Leaders are often asked to be skilled presenters of information that is new to valued colleagues. A map such as RSVP affords the leader a brain compatible strategy to introduce and enculturate important information. RSVP also helps build trust between all individuals in an organisation through non-threatening self-disclosure and recognition of common human experience. Now, take a moment and write how you might employ RSVP in your next class or presentation!
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Dr Joseph M. Saban is an Assistant Professor in the LEPF Dept. at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, Illinois, USA. Dr Thomas P. Wensch is an Adjunct Professor in the LEPF Dept. at the same university.
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