For us to form memories we must register the information, process it, store it and be able to retrieve it.
Help participants have a more memorable experience during your virtual event.
1. Trigger Emotion
Emotion acts like a highlighter that emphasizes certain aspects of experiences to make them more memorable.
Shahram Heshmat Ph.D. For Psychology Today
Ways to create emotion:
- Guided Visualizations – Great for helping people see possibilities and explore dreams and future desires. This can also be effective for showing what happens when nothing changes.
- Videos – Use emotional videos that support your content or provide motivation for change.
- Photos – Photos are great tools for recall of memories. Ask participants to find and share a photo of something significant to them. Relate this photo to content or have them share a story about the photo.
- Stories – Storytelling is a powerful way to enhance memory. Close a learning session by having participants tell a story of how they will use what they learned,. This action helps move the information into long term memory.
2. Create Patterns
The brain identifies patterns and similarities in information and stores like information together for easy access. So, if we can present in ways that make it really easy for the brain to associate patterns the brain can more efficiently store that information.
The brain is a lean mean pattern making machine.
Dr. David Sousa, How The Brain Learns
Here are a couple of ways to help create patterns:
Acronyms – Ideal for teaching processes, sequential steps, rules or methods. When the acronym is also related to content your learners will be able to make more efficient connections and store the information for easier recall. For example, if you are presenting four ways to prepare your home for sale, your acronym might be LIST. Or in a case where you are teaching clients social media strategy you might create the acronym POST. Make sure your acronym makes sense and is not just a relevant word play. It takes time to come up with the right acronym.
Word/Image Association – Relating an image to content helps the brain associate more quickly. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then associating a picture with a word multiplies that value. Images are even more powerful when you have the participant draw the image. This is a great way to teach steps in a process. Each step has a corresponding image. Teach the step, draw the image then have the attendees draw it and write the step next to the image, creating a word association with the image. For example, the first step in your process might be, Separate all Material. You can draw a picture of 3 buckets.
3. Novelty
Our brains remember things that are different or out of the ordinary. Surprise your virtual audience with the unexpected. High contrast colors, inappropriate coloring of objects and sounds that are out of place are all ways to capture attention and create memorable experiences. For example, you may use a photo of a zebra with multi-colored stripes when teaching about headlines that capture attention. Or play a laugh track during your presentation. It’s unexpected, fun and creates emotion.
Creating a memorable experience for your attendees requires planning and preparation. And it can be fun for you as well as your audience. Next time you start planning a virtual program remember these three strategies:
Trigger Emotion | Create Patterns | Add Novelty
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