What do emotions have to do with learning?

Turns out, quite a lot.

"...neuroscience over the past two decades has overturned early notions that emotions interfere with learning, revealing instead that emotion and cognition are supported by interdependent neural processes." 
—Mary Helen Immordino-Yang*

The books pictured on the right of this page all have a lot to say about learning and emotions. Antonio Damasio's research introduced me to how crucial emotion is for making good decisions, too — something required for critical thinking. 

We won't go into any neuroscience in this course, but I encourage you to read Descartes' Error (and the others shown here) when you get the chance. 

Empathy for Your Students

In his book To Sell Is Human, author Daniel Pink makes this case:

"To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources — not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end. That is also what, say a good algebra teacher does. At the beginning of a term, students don't know much about the subject. But the teacher works to convince his class to part with resources — time, attention, effort — and if they do they will be better off when the term ends than they were when it began." (p 38)

FYI Note: 
MailChimp, the online bulk email service, has a nifty interactive tool to help their subscribers focus on their readers' emotional states for various kinds of web content. Check it out at http://voiceandtone.com

Earlier in this course I asked you to describe how you felt when you looked at a passage of text. The way the text looks on a page is either off-putting or inviting. Feelings are important. Once the reader gets past that initial emotional reaction, the words you use to explain, inform, etc. present the next hurdle.

Empathy helps to guide your word choices, your voice, and the tone of your writing.

Beth L. Hewett's excellent book, Reading To Learn and Writing To Teach, provides some great examples of applying a friendly vs abrupt tone in instructor-student online communications like email and discussion posts.

We can learn from some of the biggest users of the web — marketers. For-profit or non-profit, public or private, everyone is selling something — if not products and services, then ideas. College professors are in much the same position. So let's look at a way those businesses engage their online audience.

Empathetic Content Mapping

Here's an example of a way to determine the right tone for your online copy by focusing on your users' (or readers') emotions when they come to a particular part of a website.

Your turn

Using the table on the page about Empathy as a reference, use the following table to create your own Content Map for Voice and Tone for the elements in a syllabus for an online course you might teach. Fill in the columns for Reader's Emotional State and Appropriate Tone. (I have started the list of Content Types for you. Add to it as you see the need).

* Immordino-Yang, Emotions, Learning, and the Brain, 2016 (p 18).