In this final article in my series on Building Learning Muscles, we’re going to look at the final R: Reciprocity.

Reciprocity is the social aspect of learning and it’s one of the easiest of the learning muscles to build, in fact. You can learn on your own, but even when you learn from a book or CD you’re getting information from someone else. As social animals we’re hard-wired to receive information from others in a special way; we bounce off each other synergistically.

Team or Group Learning
If you’re not already part of a group, why not form one? Group learning can be extraordinarily powerful – in fact there’s a huge body of research on group dynamics in education. Groups also provide a regular structure that you are unlikely to have learning on your own unless you’re incredibly disciplined.  Group learning also has certain pitfalls, so it’s important to understand what they are and to turn them into opportunities. Mixed learning speed is one issue: you may be the fastest in a group and get frustrated if the group slows you down; or you may be the slowest and feel embarrassed and eventually check out completely as you feel left behind. The trick here is for the extremes to help each other. Teaching something is absolutely one of the best ways to learn it properly. You can’t teach something you don’t fully understand. If you’re the slow one, you can benefit from multiple teachers (more on this in a minute). In well-integrated learning groups everyone benefits. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Being open to feedback
This is a critical learning skill. If you shut down or get sensitive every time someone gives you some critical feedback then you are missing out. Treat every piece of feedback as gold, even if you don’t agree with it, try it on anyway and see what happens. There’s always something to learn.

Being attentive to others
Pay attention to other students, not only their successes but their mistakes and why they make them. Analysing other people’s performance can really enhance your own.

Using empathy: stepping into others’ shoes
This is especially important to deal with group differences. The more effort you make to understand the other members of your group, the better you will integrate with them and be able to use them as learning resources. Don’t get frustrated with other people, try to understand them.

Imitating others
Try to find out what the other students are doing that helps them learn quickly, whatever it is you can mimic them. Mimicry is vital to learning – and I’m not talking about copying in an exam! In language, mimicry is the only way you will perfect your accent, your pronunciation, intonation and stress. Pay attention and copy!

That’s it for now on this series. I hope you’ve found it insightful. Let us know how you get on with building your learning muscles!

Gareth