Designing for the Senses
Course
Hearing [7:09]
https://players.brightcove.net/2566261579001/HyuWsfFhb_default/index.html?videoId=4526940794001
About
Learning has a soundtrack for our students, and that soundtrack has worked its way into their memory banks.Transcript
Unlike me, most people under the age of 50 carry earbuds and audio content with them everywhere. Their smart phones are listening, texting, and entertainment devices that occasionally receive a phone call. Music for generation X and Z is streaming continually. They engage with background sound throughout their waking life which creates a whole new different level of neurotransmitter connections in their brains.
Those connections were not made a generation ago. So it is difficult for us to truly understand what is happening in their brains. Their ability to tune in and out sound must be amazing. The fact they enjoy reading and studying with music clearly indicates their neural wiring is different.
Learning has a soundtrack for them, and that soundtrack has worked its way into their memory bank. If they could use music to recall the information they studied, it would be easier to take tests. The acoustical environment they study in however is almost unheard of in our educational environments.
In my corporate life, I allowed my young graphic design team to wear headsets or earbuds to listen to music while they worked. It seemed to improve their creativity, concentration and speed. Nowhere else in the company were employees allowed to tune out their surroundings and listen to music, but these 20- and 30-something people were far more productive with a soundtrack playing in their heads. It also allowed normal conversations to occur in our bullpen-like work environment without audio distractions for the designers.
Research on the impact of music on today's learners should be a topic of serious study. We have a generation of musical intelligence as a genuine disposition. Research suggests that music increases a person's spatial temporal reasoning and their ability to form mental colorful images as well as see patterns in time and space. It is intelligence little acknowledged in previous generations of learners -- compare music and spatial intelligence learners with the past generation of verbal linguistic learners who require solitude and silence to focus. This is a significant change in learning styles.
We can also observe young people who can move between tasks at the speed of light. The concept of multitasking i.e. listening to music, reading and checking Facebook all at the same time is neither reality nor how the brain functions. It is the brain's ability to move rapidly between tasks we see leveraged.
This rapid movement may explain their short attention span in more traditional learning applications. Their brains love novelty, rapid change, something new. They have trained their brains to crave novelty in an extremely high intensity. Without this intensity, the brain is lethargic and bored.
As David Sousa explains in his bookHow the Brain Learns, "When an unexpected stimulus arises, such as a loud noise from an empty room, a rush of adrenaline closes down all unnecessary activity and focuses the brain's attention so it can spring into action.Conversely, an environment that contains mainly predictable or repeated stimuli, like most classrooms and libraries, lowers the brain's interest in the outside world and tempts it to turn within for novel sensations."
The brain enjoys an adrenaline burst. Sensory stimulation makes it feel great, but there is a negative side to that enjoyment. Chronic stimulation of the endocrine system which produces this rush of adrenaline is not healthy. It is stressful, elevates the heart rate causing hypertension. Long-term hypertension is a serious problem for people of all ages in our country.
So when does music and other auditory stimulus become noise pollution and a health risk? The research is still being done, but apparently it varies somewhat by individual. What is known is children consistently exposed to higher than 70 decibels of sound in an environment have issues with cognitive performance. In a learning environment, this is noteworthy because it impacts central processing in the brain, language comprehension, visual attention, and their ability to sustain attention. And perhaps most notably the children have poor reading ability, lower standardized test scores, and poor memory or recall, and probably not surprising, these children are more easily annoyed and frequently have higher blood pressure.
When designing a school or a library, avoid high-traffic areas, airports, railways, or other chronic industrial noise. Children who come to school from homes near these noise polluters should positively respond to the lower level of sound in schools. However, their ability to tune into ambient or subtle sounds of education will be challenged. For example, they might need extra help hearing phonological sounds. Their ability to read, spell, and ultimately comprehend language starts with hearing the difference between letter and word sounds. Listening labs and other natural resources such as outdoor listening activities or the sound of water and birds can improve their ability to differentiate sounds.
Students generally are in a learning environment with a focus on dual sensory input. Vision and sound are used as their primary instructional tools. The design of schools and libraries also focuses on a dual sensory experience. Students' sensory duality is exasperated in their free time by television and digital media. Yes, vision and sound are our primary sensory intake system, but they are not our only sensory learning tools.
Let's move on to think about exploring other senses and how they can enrich multimodal learning.
Activities
Sound plays an important role for the current generation of young people, constantly playing in the background and affecting their neuro-transmitter connections. Research on the use of music on learners is outlined in this lesson, along with suggestions for helping students in the library who may be negatively impacted by sound pollution.
Consider your policies for student use of music in the library. Given the research into the benefits of background sound for today's students, does your policy need to be updated? Are there policies within the school as a whole that might need reconsideration? Look at your library space and consider how areas to accommodate the enjoyment of sound might coexist with areas for quiet study or reflection. Make a list of the changes you would like to see implemented along with your reasons for doing so.
Entry ID: 2132721
Additional Resources
About the Author
Margaret L. Sullivan, MA, is an independent consultant and principal at Library Resource Group, LLC. She holds a master's degree in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her published works include AASL's Library Spaces for 21st Century Learners: A Planning Guide for Creating New School Library Concepts along with articles on space planning in School Library Journal, Knowledge Quest, Teacher Librarian, and American School & University. For 28 years, Sullivan was an executive at the former Highsmith Inc., a leading supplier to schools and libraries, ending her career there as director of merchandising and marketing.
Select Citation Style:
MLA Citation
Sullivan, Margaret L. "Designing for the Senses. Hearing [7:09]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985343?learningModuleId=1980800&topicCenterId=2247903.
Chicago Citation
Sullivan, Margaret L. "Designing for the Senses. Hearing [7:09]." School Library Connection video. November 2015. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985343?learningModuleId=1980800&topicCenterId=2247903.
APA Citation
Sullivan, M. L. (2015, November). Designing for the senses. Hearing [7:09] [Video]. School Library Connection. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985343?learningModuleId=1980800&topicCenterId=2247903
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985343?learningModuleId=1980800&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1985343