Making Addiction Education Stick
Once a year I am fortunate to have the opportunity to teach a graduate level class at the university on the foundations of addiction treatment. And every year I struggle with how best to organize the class time, materials, and lectures in a way that optimizes students retention and liklihood that they will “act” on what they learn. This of course is an age-old topic, but recently two guys, Chip and Dan Heath, wrote a best seller called “Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die” that sheds some light on what is important.
They propose that getting ideas to stick , and more importantly increasing the chances that people will act on those ideas, is enhanced when they are: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and expressed in stories (SUCCESs). The book is well-written and provides numerous examples of how these principles play out in the real world.
After devouring the book, I decided to use the principles in my teaching efforts. The results were very positive, as my students reported that story writing (instead of tests) and a final paper based on using class experiences to illustrate the SUCCESs principles resulted in an exciting, fun, and very different class. Whether I can say for sure that the material they learned will be retained and acted upon in the future would require an outcome study that I may consider in the future.
These ideas can be translated into many settings: teaching, counseling, coaching, translational research, and implementation science. Here is my summary of the ideas applied to addiction: Making Addiction Education Stick.
I think its great that someone is willing to take the time to re-think the educating process. I feel that when drug education is being presented in a class room setting, it becomes just another class. The meaning doesn’t sink in. You are just trying to get a grade, going through the motions and then immediately forgotten. It will be interesting to see if this new method constitutes more positive results.
I enjoyed reading this blog. I really appreciate the idea of education and rehabilitation versus simply shoving addicts and offenders toward the closest prison, never to see the light of day again!
The new method which you’ve discussed regarding having your students write papers to show their understanding of the materials and retention versus simply testing them over it is interesting and valuable. All too often, students study for a test and as soon as that test is taken, all of the information goes away. However, writing a paper forces a bit more retention due to the necessity of researching the topic and having a real handle on the subject matter. Plus, it does provide a positive reinforcement which the student might eventually look back on as a research tool etc.
You shared a story with our class a few weeks ago about a man stuck in an airport while his wife was in labor that I very recently shared with a group of men with co-occurring disorders. My sharing of this story in this particular group I facilitate on coping strategies was totally spontaneous, but it fit and felt right. Looking back it seems as though I was carrying that story around with me just waiting for the right moment to share it. The next day one of the members approached me with a follow up question related to the story. This is so unusual! And I was so grateful. The story you shared with us that I then passed on to others had an impact on this individual….granted, as you say, we may not know how successful of an impact the story had on students or clients in a therapeutic group setting, but that an impact was made makes all the difference. Thanks for being so intentional with your teaching.
last year I had registered for your class and then dropped it realizing I was not supposed to have registered that quarter. I am now in the class and although I don’t think it is simple i think because of the way you teach it I have been able to retain more. Last year in the one class I did attend was the first time I had heard addiction being referred to as a disease and as I saw your powerpoint on the brain and then heard your explanation I was dumbfounded! Why haven’t I heard about addiction as a disease before, afterall I work in mental health. I see this posting and I think that how you teach is valuable because everytime you share a story and everytime you show a video or a documentary or research it sticks w/my learning. As well i have heard a couple times you have to build relationships so that they take the place of objects of addictions, I’ve heard that an although it sounds like a minor thing in treatment, I believe it is huge and as I read on the blog and read the articles (which I saved from last year & current ones) this comes to mind…this is the goal and I am excited to be learning in this area as it is an area I have little experience in.
For me, the two most important elements in getting ideas to stick is keeping things simple and concrete. To often I feel, and especially in mental health fields, professionals appear to over complicate simple concepts with creating new, unclear and sometimes redundant jargon to describe them. As an undergraduate I often wondered if professionals did this as a means of creating job security by making their ideas incomprehensible to those outside their field! The various counseling theories we’re presented in our theories class have a number of overlapping ideas but often each theorist provides their own label for the same or similar phenomenon. I often don’t feel that I’ve truly learned a theory until I’ve been able to distill out the core ideas and mentally drop most of the jargon in favor of simpler language.
Prior to registering for this class, I had heard glowing reviews. Former students explained how taking this course would be challenging but I would be a better counselor for it. After being disappointed with the level of intensity in my previous courses I was ready for this challenge. I was dishearten with the changes in teaching approach. I had looked forward to utilizing my creative side finding ways to incorporate the research into my writing.
What I realized though, at the end of the term, is that great teaching is not about fancy slide shows etc. What makes an instructor great is first setting high expectations and secondly being passionate about the subject. SUCCESS may help embed the material, but it does not replace having a professor that enjoys what they do so much that they exude their excitement of the subject on their students. Even though I will not be in the addiction field, I feel confidant to deal with the addiction issues that will arise in my future profession.