Color Mixing Warm colors elicit alertness; cooler colors support creativity.

Human Learning & Retention 100 83 67 50 33 17

overload or with an environment that is really not conducive to people feeling good. They are looking to create something wonderful, only they do not follow any principles. They go by feel and intuition, but they just don’t have enough infor- mation yet.” To help fill that gap, Sullivan and PSAV co-

produced a white paper called “Audiovisual Tech- nologies and Adult Learning in Meetings,” which doesn’t just offer AV strategies that capitalize on how attendees’ brains work, but also explains the science behind them. While meeting planners don’t necessarily need to be steeped in neurosci- ence, it’s helpful for them to know the principles and applications — if only to understand the odds against any single bit of sensory information lodging in an attendee’s brain. “We are taking in about 1 million bits of infor-

mation every second, but we can be conscious of only 16 to 40 bits,” Sullivan told a packed audience at Convening Leaders 2013 this past January, where, along with Van Dyke and Kati Quigley, CMP, senior director for worldwide partner community events at Microsoft, she presented the session “Using AV to Enhance Learning, Memory, and the Meeting Experience.” (The information for this story comes from the presentation, the white paper, and an interview with Sullivan.) “We are taking in all this information through

our senses, but sensory memory is really short — we’re talking fractions of a section,” Sullivan said.

“We miss most of what happens. We have to get out of thinking that people learn and remember just because we tell them something.” When sensory information is noticed, it goes

Retention & Visual Imagery 100 83 67 50 33 17

Speaker and visual imagery

Learning & AV Input 100 83 67 50 33 17

Hearing + graphics

67+ 10 83114+2+1

Sight

Sight is by far the most dominant human sense; 83 percent of learning occurs visually.

Sound Smell Touch

Task-related learning

Speaker only

Graphics alone

Reading + graphics

Hearing, reading + graphics

Percent more learning than control group PCMA.ORG

Audiences retain about 10 percent of what a speaker says. Add images and that goes up to 65 percent.

SOURCE: “Audiovisual Technologies and Adult Learning in Meetings,” © 2013 PSAV Presentation Services / Brainstrength Systems, brainstrength.net.

91+63+46+32+12+7+1

Hearing + reading

Reading text

MARCH 2013 PCMA CONVENE

It’s better to present an explanation in words and pictures than solely in words.

Hearing spoken text

43