Digital Smarts - Use Your Hands!

Instruction using gestures, whether performed by a live teacher or digital avatar, may improve student learning, according to research by Susan Wagner, Cook at the University of Iowa. For example, a teacher explaining a math equation while gesturing to both sides of the equal sign, helps students make the connection much more quicker than a teacher who drones on with arms down in front of a class.

Cook is among a cadre of researchers who study learning in the context of “embodied cognition”, which is the theory that our thoughts are shaped by the physical experiences of our body. According to this view, even when we think about abstract ideas, our brains link them to concrete, physical things that we experience through our hands, our senses and other body parts. This is even if the experience is virtual rather than physical.