Why Activity-Based Workshops Outperform PowerPoint | The Learning Science

Author: Simon Knocker, thebigteam

Simon Knocker and Activity Based Learning

In organisations today, change is constant, yet genuine behaviour change remains one of the hardest challenges to achieve. Many workshops still rely on slide decks, long presentations, and passive instruction, even though decades of research show that people simply don’t learn this way. Human beings learn by thinking, doing, exploring, testing, and talking not by being told.

The workshops we design at thebigteam and Joing Consulting deliberately minimise PowerPoint. Instead, they immerse people in activities, structured problem solving, meaningful dialogue, and hands-on engagement because this is how the human brain actually learns. Below is the science that explains why this approach consistently drives deeper insight, stronger understanding, and lasting behaviour change.

1. People Understand More in Activity-Based Workshops

Active learning is not just a preference it is a cognitive requirement. When participants solve problems, write ideas down, build models or maps, or generate insights themselves, the brain shifts into a higher-processing state.This effortful thinking strengthens memory, deepens understanding, and increases participants’ ability to make sense of complex issues.

Research from learning theorists like Edgar Dale, Robert Bjork, and Slamecka & Graf shows that people remember far more when they create information rather than receive it. Active learning rewires understanding and with it, behaviour.

2. Hands-on Activities Improve Thinking and Accelerate Insight

The human brain is deeply connected to the hands. Writing, sketching, sorting post-its, grouping themes, or physically mapping processes engages multiple neural systems at once motor, visual, sensory, and conceptual.

This multimodal engagement is the foundation of embodied cognition, a field championed by thinkers such as George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Frank R. Wilson and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Their research shows that manual engagement improves reasoning, concept formation, and problem-solving key ingredients in learning and adaptation.

In other words: using your hands helps your brain understand.

3. Reducing Cognitive Overload Improves Clarity and Learning

PowerPoint-heavy sessions overwhelm the brain with too much information, too quickly. Cognitive Load Theory (John Sweller) reveals that working memory has strict limits, and overloaded learners retain almost nothing.

Activity-based workshops reduce noise and redirect mental energy into exploring, sense-making, and applying knowledge. The result is not only better understanding but a deeper appreciation of why change is necessary.

4. Dialogue Helps People Refine Thinking and Shift Beliefs

Dialogue is not “a nice add-on” it is a core mechanism for adult learning. When people explain their thinking, challenge assumptions, or explore ideas together, they reorganise and strengthen their understanding.

Pioneers like Lev Vygotsky, Neil Mercer, and Karen Littleton show that social reasoning creates cognitive elaboration the process that turns information into meaning. Dialogue builds shared understanding and helps individuals validate their thinking, reducing resistance and increasing willingness to change.

5. People Learn Best From Each Other

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory demonstrates that humans learn naturally through observation, modelling, and interaction. Workshops that encourage peer-to-peer learning surface tacit knowledge, accelerate insight, and reveal practical wisdom that no slide deck can deliver.

When participants share stories, compare experiences, and learn collaboratively, they develop a collective understanding of challenges and solutions, crucial for organisational transformation.

6. Problem-Solving Builds Adaptability and Commitment

When participants analyse real scenarios, calculate impacts, or work through industry challenges, they engage the executive functions of the brain; judgment, planning, decision-making, and behavioural regulation.

Neuroscientific research shows that problem-solving activates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for adaptive behaviour. When people discover the logic of change themselves, they internalise the rationale behind it, reducing resistance and increasing ownership.

7. Externalising Ideas “Lightens the Brain” and Boosts Insight

Humans can only hold a small number of ideas in working memory.By writing thoughts down, using post-its, creating visual maps, or building models, participants offload cognitive burden. This frees the brain to think more clearly, see patterns, and connect insights.

Research from the Extended Mind theory (Andy Clark & David Chalmers) shows that thinking improves when we distribute it across tools and the environment. This is why walls covered in ideas create breakthrough moments far more reliably than a slide on a screen.

8. Movement Stimulates Creativity and Attention

A static room leads to static thinking. Even small movements walking to a board, switching tables, placing post-its increase oxygenation, energy, and dopamine levels, improving creativity, alertness, and problem-solving.

Stanford research (Oppezzo & Schwartz) found that walking increased creative thought by up to 60%. Workshops that incorporate movement keep participants energised and thinking sharply.

9. Co-Creation Builds Ownership and Ownership Drives Behaviour Change

People commit to what they help create.When participants identify problems, generate ideas, and build solutions together, they develop psychological ownership. Research by Pierce, Kostova & Dirks shows that this sense of ownership dramatically increases commitment, accountability, and sustained behaviour change.

In change programmes, co-creation is not optional it is essential.

10. Emotion and Motivation Make Learning Stick

Challenge, curiosity, teamwork, and problem-solving create emotional investment. These experiences release dopamine and oxytocin, improving memory, connection, and motivation.

Studies by Wolfram Schultz and Teresa Amabile show that emotionally engaging, intrinsically motivating experiences create deeper learning and stronger follow-through. When participants enjoy the process, they lean into the learning, and lasting change becomes possible.

In Summary

Activity-based workshops outperform PowerPoint because they align with how the brain naturally learns. They combine hands-on engagement, social interaction, cognitive challenge, movement, emotion, and self-generated insight the exact conditions required for real understanding and lasting behaviour change.

This is why our workshops are built around exploration, dialogue, problem-solving and collective meaning-making not slides. They don’t just inform people. They change how they think.

What to know more, contact thebigteam