Exercising Your Brain

This session addresses the question: “What activities can learners engage in to improve distinct brain areas and processes?” Just like endurance, strength, and agility; your memory, perception, and cognition can be improved through exercise. Many of us are fascinated with puzzles such as Sudoku and crosswords. In addition to releasing dopamine, puzzles have been shown to improve specific areas of the brains. In this session, participants will solve different types of puzzles that stimulate distinct brain areas and processes in the broad areas of memory, perception, and cognition. The broader application of this pertains to improving course design. Understanding the distinct areas of the brain affords us the opportunity of designing learning activities that address the outcomes associated with a particular learning objective. It stimulates us to think about course design with a different lens.