Fascinating Fragrance Fact #1: Women were “rated higher in intelligence and friendliness when they wore scent in a job interview than when they did not, reports the Journal of Applied Psychology”, as reported in Cosmopolitan. Scent matters, no question.
But it is not always successful. While I’ve heard that the smell of baking bread speeds home sales, Smell-O-Vision and Scent-O-Rama have had, shall we say, limited success.
Ultimately the question is: does scent aid learning?
eLearn Magazine Advisory Board member, Janet Clarey, wrote about Scented Webinars in her blog. A participant would receive a “USB that you add liquid to which then ‘activates’ when heated by the computer.” So the technology is there. Janet went on to speculate that scent could be used for “quality control at food companies…, detecting dangerous smells (chemicals, etc.),” and medical applications. I recall learning that our olfactory memory is one of our strongest. And there are probably fewer people with an impaired sense of smell than there are people who are colorblind, yet most learning applications use color.
The potential and technology exist for scented learning. Janet pointed out some learning situations that could be enhanced, and there may be enhanced recall of any material through scent. What would make you try it?
Thanks for picking this up. I find it a fascinating concept. I’ve said this before but I recall on online master’s class where we had to provide a response to “what’s missing from the online learning experience?” I said smell. Now, I don’t know what I’d say. My Google profile says, under “something I still can’t find on google”: the pleasure or displeasure of olfaction. I suppose I’ll have to change that soon.
A few comments:
Scented learning is largely missing from the classroom experience as well. I wonder if this is another indicator that online learning is more likely to attract experimentation.
One possible reason why it’s been ignored previously: our lack of widely distributed expertise about it. Could your idea presage the dawn of a need for a new literacy – olfactory literacy?
Its application to learning is not readily apparent, is it? How would scents enhance recall or learning environments? Environments I can think of where scents are paramount – shops that sell incense, pine forests, perfume counters at department stores – do not readily associate with learning for me. So I’m not sure what would make me try it.
Ah, I just thought of one: the smell of a book – now figure out how to send that digitally and you may be onto something… 😉
I have been (half)joking for years in my classes that scents are the great unused tool in learning, given the well smells can trigger memories.
This is a really interesting topic. I never really thought about scent in regards to learning at all, but have thought about its strong implications in terms of memory. Sometimes a scent can recall a particular moment in your life, a place, or a feeling. For me, emotion and mindset are very closely tied in with scent – for example, I’ve changed which perfumes or body sprays I’ve used throughout the years and if I notice someone else wearing one from the past, I can remember exactly where I was emotionally and what my mindset was. So, I guess in terms of learning – say, pine and calculus – but it would have to be so deliberate that I’m not sure it would work. I know there is most likely a lot of science behind this phenomenon, but personally, if I made a huge effort to tie together scent and concepts to learn, I’m not sure it would work – the association was always effortless before, so would intentional linkage be successful?
Classroom and online education often consists of contrived situations to encourage learning and retention. Not to mention that real life has no soundtrack but movies do to build emotional response.
A company called Bionetics Photo Services has developed a multisensory learning system that was tested by the Georgia Dept. of Education and appears to aid in content intake and retention. Check it out at http://www.photoservices.net/bps/Projects.html