The learning landscape is the final piece in the design phase. In the previous two issues, we introduced 15 design principles that address learning objectives, learner outcomes, and content outlines. Here, we turn our attention to designing a learning environment that focuses on learner care, enhances group dynamics, and includes sensory and emotional elements.

We explore how each of these design steps plays out within the context of four realities about how adults learn now: They require a new treatment of information, are challenging to reach, have high expectations, and the meetings they attend must create an experience.

New treatment of information
Design Principle 16: Create informal learning environments. Rick Borovoy, founder of event data-management solutions company nTAG, is an informal-learning advocate. "An idea needs to be processed - compared to long-held beliefs and other knowledge - before it can influence a person's perspective," he said. "Often, knocking around new concepts with people you respect and trust clarifies thoughts, making new content more concrete, applicable, and memorable. In short, learning does not completely take place during a presentation. The period after the session - when participants candidly and openly dialogue with each other - is critical to learning. It is during such 'white spaces' [networking, receptions, and breaks] that new ideas presented at the session are often successfully integrated into learning." Jay Cross, author of Informal Learning, calls informal learning environments "learnscapes."

Meeting agendas can promote a mini-lecture: 10 minutes spent on lecture and 50 minutes on engaging with the learners. Meeting designers can design informal areas for attendees to congregate outside the organized sessions. They can design a "learning lounge" to promote exchange between learners. Even simple whiteboards for writing and capturing thoughts placed in the hallways can help you promote informal learning.

"In addition to the all-important education, we stress the value of talking with our exhibitors and of networking with peers and suppliers," said Lisa Mikita, CMP, CAE, assistant director, conferences and meetings, Association of Legal Administrators. "The exhibit hall is an important piece of the overall education individuals are exposed to at our conferences."

Learners Are Challenging to Reach
Design Principle 17: Engage the learner. Learners no longer see themselves as passive recipients of information. They expect to be engaged before, during, and after a learning experience. Prior to the meeting, they want to be given the opportunity to help develop content and suggest methods of delivery. Surveys are only the first step in allowing participants to co-create content.

"Sitting in a room and listening without some sort of participation is becoming a thing of the past in our industry," said Kathy Miller, president of Total Event Resources. Recently, Total Event created a meeting around the theme "Drive." An online survey asked participants, "What Drives You?" Total Event then drew from the hundreds of responses it received to create a motivational speech and video for the event. "The participants were totally engaged, as the messaging spoke specifically to them," Miller said. "It was just amazing to see the things that drive this audience: everything from the number of twins in the room to the number of volunteer hours they devoted to great causes. The speech had great impact and emotionally connected with everyone in the audience."

Design Principle 18: Focus on the emotional state of the participants. How participants are feeling is vitally connected to their ability to focus and learn. If they are enthusiastic about, intrigued by, and receptive to information they are offered (providing it is relevant and useful), then they will learn.

Meeting planners can appeal to the emotional state of learners by letting them know "What's In It for Me" (WIIFM). Remind all presenters that this is top of mind for their audience. If learners will not be easily persuaded, then acknowledge that challenge. If people had a horrendous travel experience getting to the meeting, acknowledge how they are feeling. Show respect for each learner's emotional state. Allow learners to guide the program through interaction, questions, reflection, and feedback. Finally, pay attention to their physical needs - breaks, food, temperature, and lighting - all of which affect mood. "Time spent away from the office is precious, and we know that it can be stressful for our participants [to feel cut off from home and the office]," said Paula Szyper, program director, American Hospital Association. "We try to ease some of this stress by making it easier to connect with home and office. We operate cyber cafes and a wireless lounge so that people can use their computers, phones, and BlackBerries to check e-mail. We revised our meeting schedule to allow for more breaks to give people the opportunity to check in. We understand that we must design our meetings to meet their emotional needs."

Learners Have High Expectations
Design Principle 19: Create multisensory learning environments. Creating a successful learning environment depends on using all five senses and immersing learners in various complex, interactive experiences. Persuasive communication expert Kare Anderson suggests that meeting professionals conduct a "sensory exposure audit" by asking hotel and convention center staff for photos of the actual colors and patterns most frequently used in their sleeping, eating, meeting, and gathering spaces. Create meeting theme colors and images that are compatible and even complementary to the surroundings.

"One of our themes for our annual meeting this year is 'A Slice of Orlando,' which appears in our e-newsletter and is depicted by oranges with a fun fact or thing to do in Orlando," said Kelly Fox, CMP, CAE, associate executive director, member programs, Academy of General Dentistry. "On site, we will offer oranges at registration and carry that theme throughout the meeting. We incorporated oranges at other booths during dental meetings leading up to our annual meeting. A highly sensory experience produces a meaningful and memorable message for our members; it creates an emotional connection and richer experience, and appeals to a wider range of learning styles."

Meetings as an Experience
Design Principle 20: Break down the experience. Designing a meeting as an experience is not a new idea - but the "how" of designing the experience remains largely unexplored territory. The first step is to view the meeting from the learner's perspective. "We can't always guarantee a positive experience for all attendees," said Canadian independent planner Dallas Ballance, CMP, GoodwinBallance Communications. "However, I do evaluate a site with an eye towards how our participants - with all their differences - might react to the meeting. I consider my participants' demographics and try to step into their shoes (in terms of gender, age, learning styles, lifestyles) to understand how they might react to the meeting experience. The worst thing you can do is create a meeting experience in isolation, without talking to your various stakeholders."

Design Principle 21: Design for flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Meeting planners can promote the feeling of flow in the learning environment by keeping in mind that their attendees should be able to:

• recognize clear goals (expectations and rules are discernable)
• experience a balance between ability level and challenge (the learning is neither too easy nor too difficult)
• have a sense of personal control over the learning or environment
• focus on and delve deeply into a subject
• have the opportunity to provide direct and immediate feedback
• see how the meeting will benefit them so the learning is intrinsically rewarding
• observe that differences among all the participants is embraced rather than seen an obstacle.

Not only must the flow allow total immersion within the moment, it must pervade the overall conference. Too often, back-to-back presenters are packed into the schedule, with little or no time allowed for Q&A or genuine discussion. Meeting planners must work with speakers so they do not run over, and allow sufficient time for coffee breaks and for lunch. Time needs to be built into the schedule for informal learning through conversation, for reflection and action planning - and informal learnscapes need to be created.

Design Principle 22: Leverage the venue. One simple step to create an experience is to fully leverage a venue's natural properties to help enhance the learning environment.

B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy and Authenticity: What Customers Really Want, once took a less-than-desirable meeting room - a long and narrow space, with curved windows on one side - and worked it to their advantage. Edina Lessack, CMP, founder of Meetings &?Events USA, plans Pine and Gilmore's thinkAbout innovative learning programs for their company, Strategic Horizons. She made the space over into an airplane cabin. Attendees received "boarding passes" from a ticket counter and were given food and beverages by "attendants" with rolling carts, dressed in matching white shirts, blue aprons, striped ties, and airline pins. A negative room shape was converted into a creative and memorable environment.

Meeting planners can draw upon unique venues, amazing décor, unusual or exotic elements, special furnishings, outdoor spaces, recreation options, and artwork to create the experience. For the 2007 thinkAbout event in Nashville, CVB sales staff took Lessack on a detailed tour, which gave her and her client an opportunity to explore places they might want to use for the event. The bureau also connected her with a local songwriter, who created a song specifically about thinkAbout's mindset, the personality of Pine and Gilmore, and their enthusiastic followers. The printed music became part of the invitation, and the song was recorded for Strategic Horizon's Web site and mastered on CDs that were given to each participant. The songwriter performed and then led the group in "their song" as a way to cap off the meeting at an off-site venue. Goo-Goo Clusters candy, made in Nashville by a company founded in the 1920s, proved to be the perfect in-room amenity.

In Free Prize Inside, author Seth Godin writes, "Design is the single highest-leverage investment you can make - a well-designed product is usually cheaper to make and service than what you're doing now, and it sells better." The implications for meetings are obvious.

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Sensory Exposure Audits
Professional speaker Kare Anderson uses sensory exposure audits to build positive experiences at meetings. She suggests separating the entire meeting into "exposures" to ensure that the experience is as visualized. Anderson encourages writing a brief description of the exposure in chronological sequence. Then, as part of the sensory exposure audit, note whether learners will perceive the exposure as positive, negative, or neutral. For example: Positive: Candid photos taken as attendees enter the opening-night mixer, placed in pressed-board white frames inscribed with the meeting theme and hung on fish line in the buffet breakfast room the next day for their take-away souvenir. Negative: Inevitably long treks between certain meeting rooms. Mostly neutral: Conventionally decorated hotel rooms. See www.sayitbetter.com  for more ideas from Anderson.

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Multisensory Learning Environments
Think about color and sound when designing your meetings. Color affects mood (psychological) and creates bodily changes (physiological). Use color strategically to:

• Create interest and patterns - When you look at a map, you always know that the land is green and the water is blue. Facilitate the same quick understanding for your learners with highly recognizable patterns and colors.
• Create a mood - While the emotions triggered by a color can vary from person to person, studies show that specific colors and combinations can psychologically affect the majority of people, regardless of their culture or past. Likewise, music can enrich the experience by:
• Building memory - Researchers exploring the neurobiology of music have found that it stimulates regions of the brain responsible for memory, motor-control timing, and language. Consider how you learned your ABCs - set to music.
• Connecting people - Music utilizes both sides of our brains; it allows us to connect multiple neural pathways on the right and left sides of the brain. This helps build more memory by strengthening synapses in all brain systems - whether you are right-brained or left-brained.
• Affecting the mood - Music can influence our heart rate (blood flow) and immune system (through stress levels). Music can trigger the neurotransmitter serotonin (influencing attention, learning, and mood) and the hormone epinephrine (which controls our "fight or flight" response).
• Motivating the crowd - Music builds camaraderie; it's an experience the entire group shares.

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Creating More Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, suggests employing these elements to create a sense of flow in the meeting environment:

• Creative room arrangements - chairs, pin walls, charts, room for attendees to stand and move.
•  Ability to visually play with information - charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, wall space to create a "results" wall or post open topics.
• Prototyping of solutions - the ability to simulate and play with possible resolutions to issues.

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Sue Tinnish is principal, SEAL Inc., which focuses on improving the content of meetings for associations and corporations. She is director of the Accepted Practice Exchange (APEX) program.
Glen C. Ramsborg, Ph.D., is senior director, education, PCMA.
The How Adults Learn, Now series is sponsored by the Hiltons of Chicago, www.hiltonfamilychicago.com