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(A synthesis of current
research)
Methods of Enhancing Learning and
Recall
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Continual attention to
students attention
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Generating retrieval
practice—having students recall information
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Spacing multiple
opportunities to learn, study and be tested over time is a very powerful
method of enhancing long term learning
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Spacing the delivery of
information rather then giving it in mass—improves all aspects of learning
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Presenting key concepts from
more than one standpoint and demonstrating the relevance of key ideas in
multiple context enhance long term recall and the generation of new knowledge
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Providing structure to the
days learning activities—outline, set of questions, cognitive map all improve
learning and recall
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Having students generate
their own outlines or maps from the lecture or class activity
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Using visual images, mental
imaging and other mnemonic techniques( anything that assist memory)
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Use analogies, metaphors and
similes regularly in your teaching
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Have students generate
elaborations of their understanding
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Have students make
predictions about outcomes in advance of their experiments or problem solving
activities
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Using open-ended, relevant
questions and insisting that all students try to answer them
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Testing
cumulatively—requires students to continually revisit the course information
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Limit the amount of
objective testing that allows for short term “cramming”
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Vary the ways in which
students are allowed to demonstrate what they know about a subject
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Continually ask students to
recall their knowledge about a subject as well as their understanding of that
knowledge—this produces better Long Term Memories
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Students need activities
that cause them to reflect upon what they have been presented in class—these
can include:
a. summary writing
b. predictions
c. problem solving activities
d. mind map making
e. outlining
f. quizzing
g. comprehension
papers
h. preparation for oral presentations
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Use of emotion in teaching
and in assignments enhances memory formation
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Limit the amount of
information taught each day-3-4 main points—and break it up in to small units
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If its brand new
information build background to connect it to
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The brain is an excellent
copier—use this as a tool in your teaching
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Keep as many of the class
activities as possible focused on using the frontal integrative cortex of the
brain—where most of the pleasure centers are.
Background
on the Brain and Improved Recall
(based on the work of James Zull, The Art of Changing the Brain)
Humans can’t understand
anything unless they create internal neuronal networks (NN) that reflects some
set of physical relationships that accurately map the relationships that exist
in what we are trying to understand
1. Start with concrete
experiences—physical images
Concrete experiences contain
much of what we need for understanding because it produces images for our brain
to analyze, rearrange, manipulate or turn into action. Images enhance recall
Best Tools
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First hand experiences
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Visual images
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Metaphors—my office is a
prison
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Similes—life is like a bowl
of cherries
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Analogies—He is fishing
without bait
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Examples—A good example of a
high calorie dessert is banana splits
Examples of concrete are:
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Starting with the problem
not the tools to solve the problem
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If I am teaching medical
education I start with the patient
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Starting with a story in
history not the details
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Any first hand experience
2. Try to determine what
connections are missing
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Students backgrounds are
not linear— they are more like a web with lots of different pieces of
information in different locations
3. Teachers need to
spend time finding out what background information and skills their students
have and do not have.
4. Students need to be
asked to explain, demonstrate, create images of their understanding in order to
discover what connections might be missing
5. Keep in mind students have
neural networks for how they believe school should be
6. New
learning activities will take time to become integrated with their ideas about
how learning should be.
7. Any new activity will
take multiple repetitions before students will decide if they see it as
important to their learning
8. Students have been
conditioned in K-12 to seek grades—it will not be easy to shift that view
9. Teach students how
to observe—For students to focus on the things teachers see as most important
they must learn how to develop habits of observation and abilities to create
mental images of what they observe
10. The change in neural
networks is directly related to:
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The importance of the
information to the learner
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How often the information is
used by the learner
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Most importantly the way in
which it is presented to the learner--as an image
11. When two neural networks
fire at the same time the result is they get wired together (Hebb) in a whole
new network. The blending of old and new creates a whole new
12. New networks don’t takes
the place of old networks
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Information (or skills or
behaviors) that may have been wrong or incomplete or mythological) are not
destroy but new knowledge
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Given the right
circumstances the old NN or the old way of doing things will return as it was
before
The Back Cortex—Place for Reflection
and Meaning
Time and Learning
In the brain’s learning cycle
the reassembling of the sensory data into understanding takes place in the
integrative back cortex of the brain—this process takes time. This process was
referred to by David Kolb as “reflective observation” in his 1984 Experiential
Learning Model.
What students do when they
reflect is to seek an image that fits their experiences—they look for unity—the
teachers’ job is to give students the right assignments that cause them to
reflect on the right things.
Understanding can take
minutes, hours, days or even years—time to reflect on what has been presented
and to see where it fits, and its importance is necessary for deep learning to
occur.
Long Term Memory (LTM)—A Mostly Back
Brain Function
We
want students to remember but not to memorize!
Memory will occur as a natural
part of learning when the information is important, practiced and connected.
LTM is a mixture of feelings
and facts—it allows us to construct information that comes from a life time of
learning
LTM’s that we are conscious of
are called Explicit—two parts
Semantic---our facts
Episodic--- our stories or the big pictures but not all the details—lots
of emotion in episodic memories
LTM’s that we are not
conscious of are called Implicit—behaviors,
beliefs and feelings can all be stored in implicit memory
Memories are not stored in any
specific location in the brain but the process of
memory has been localized in specific parts of the cerebral cortex
Semantic memories are located
in the left frontal cortex and parts of the back brain on both sides.
Episodic memories are located
in right frontal cortex and back cortex.
The formation of explicit
memories requires the work of the hippocampus--it is the master assembler but it
does not store memories.
Feelings and Memories
Emotions can cause immediate
memory formation that can last a lifetime. Emotions can also impede memory
formation and actually over long periods of time damage the memory centers
including the hippocampus.
Feelings can and do aid in
memory recall and also trigger false memories. How we feel about a learning
activity has a tremendous affect on the memories that are formed or not formed
from it.
Adrenalin the neuro-chemical
that is often released under stress can improve the formation of semantic memory
while at the same time inhibiting the work of the frontal cortex.
Students under stress for
exams can use the adrenalin to aid in their memorizing but it will inhibit their
taking action with the information (a frontal cortex activity)—students can pass
the test but not really be able to use the information or have it later on.
(James McGaugh, http://www.irvineworldnews.com/Astories/dec4/mcgaugh.htm)
False Memories
The hippocampus will assemble
memories to fit a given context even when the sensory data is not present. If
there is enough data to create a context our brain will fill in what is missing.
This can lead to students’ feeling they are absolutely correct only to discover
that the missing data was really important and they are very wrong.
Working Memory
Working memory is one of the
main functions of the front integrative cortex.
Working memory helps people
remember what they need to solve a problem or develop an idea even if it’s
mundane like getting to the dentist on time or remembering to bring home the
milk.
It is possible to hold quite a
bit of information in STM if we work hard and pay attention to it but that
information can easily disappear because the WM and LTM involve different
pathways in the brain.
(This
is the biological explanation of why cramming for test does not produce
learning)
WM is limited in capacity,
tenacity and time—it does not hold tightly to anything and can be easily
distracted. At the same time working memory helps create new ideas and there
appears to be no limit to those ideas. The power of this limited part of the
brain is almost inexhaustible.
It is a good thing that WM has
its limitations as if it could hold more information we would likely not reason
as well, waste time on irrelevant things, not notice important things, etc.
WM and Teaching
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Don’t overload it—the more
things in working memory the harder it is to focus on what is most important.
If you are shoveling too much new data in then the only result is that other
data has to be leaving.
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Two to three main items per
class period is reasonable.
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Teacher should break things
up into smaller pieces. This is what the brain does naturally anyway. Good
students often find their own ways to keep the parts of things divided into
small groups that fit together naturally.
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Working memory doesn’t
mature. When something is brand new it is like being in kindergarten again.
Teachers need to remember what it is like to be a novice learner.
WM and Thinking
The conscious rearranging and
manipulation of items in working memory comes closest to what we call thinking.
This process is carried out by the executive part of the front brain of which
there are two parts:
As a teacher, we may want to
focus on each part separately.
Learning by Copying
Copying is of great value to
the brain for survival. Students mimic what they experience constantly. The same
neurons fire when we observe an action as when we do the action. (These are
called mirror neurons)
Is copying learning? We get
the basic raw material for learning from others but it may be how we organize it
or manipulate it that creates learning
Also we must consciously or
unconsciously chose to copy or mimic and it is at that point that we take
ownership of the information.
We can often send students
mixed messages about copying, for example we want students to mimic our work
ethic, honesty, reflection process, etc but we don’t want them to copy others’
work—except sometimes we do when their peers are showing them how to do
something. The brain’s natural instinct to copy is at work all the time.
Current Memory Research and Its Application to Instruction and Learning
(based
on the work of James Zull, 2002)
Pleasure seems to be associated
with the frontal cortex and the frontal cortex is all about action and movement.
Dopamine is the neuro-chemical linked to pleasure and it is found throughout the
frontal cortex. Dopamine is thought not be the pleasure reward itself but
gives the “GO” signal which leads to action which is the reward. What does this
have to do with MEMORY?
Well movement seems to equal
pleasure. This includes movement towards a learning goal, playing a game or
reaching an achievement—i.e. learning something new. Movement towards a goal or
leaning something new is what students need to feel pleasure. Discovering
something new or exploring new ideas are all pleasure generating activities.
Memory on the other hand including recall of information is associated with the
past and connected with the back part of the cortex—the receiving part of the
brain. This kind of learning, memorizing and recalling answers (worksheets) is
less pleasurable and more work for a student.
In imaging experiments when
learners were engaged in postulating answers and getting feedback on the answers
the basal structures (pleasure areas of the brain) were more active. When
students were simply asked to memorize associations the pleasure areas were less
active and the back cortex near the memory systems were more active. (Zull, Art
of Changing the Brain, 2002)
It may be that
students don’t like having to memorize not only because it is hard work and time
consuming but because it does not generate any pleasure.
What is Memory
Fundamentally, memory represents a
change in who we are. Our habits, our ideologies, our hopes and fears are all
influenced by what we remember of our past.
At the most basic level, we
remember because the connections between our brains' neurons change.
Each experience primes the brain
for the next experience.
Memory also represents a change
in who we are because it is predictive of who we will become.
We remember things more easily
if we have been exposed to similar things before.
So what we remember from the
past has a lot to do with what we can learn in the future.
Scientists divide memory into
categories based on the amount of time the memory lasts.
The shortest memories lasting only
milliseconds are called
immediate memories,
Memories lasting about a minute
are called
working memories.
Memories lasting anywhere from an
hour too many years are called
long-term memories.
Modern computers encode memory as
digital bits of information that are "randomly accessible."
Functionally, this means that your
computer can bring up your best friend's phone number without accessing any
information about what your best friend looks like or how you met.
The human brain stores memory in a
very different way; recalling your best friend's phone number may very well
bring to mind your friend's face, a pleasant conversation that you had, and a
vacation you took together.
While computer memories are
discrete and informationally simple, human memories are tangled together and
informationally complex.
Unlike computer memories, a human memory is an abstract relationship amongst
thoughts that arises out of neural activity spread over the whole brain.
The process from both a
biological and a behavioral perspective is critically dependent on
reinforcement.
Reinforcement can come in the
form of repetition or practice; we remember that two plus two equals four
because we've heard it so many times.
Reinforcement can also occur
through emotional arousal; most people remember where they were when they heard
about the 9-11 tragedy because of the highly emotional content of that event.
Arousal is also a product of
attention, so memories can be reinforced by paying careful attention and
consciously attempting to remember.
The process of converting
working memory into long-term memory is called
consolidation, and again, it is
characterized by the loss of distracting information.
From a practical perspective,
that means that we can remember something best if we learn it in a context that
we understand or if it is emotionally important to us.
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Mnemonic strategies
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Contextual learning
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Repetitive rehearsal
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Emotional arousal
Are all good ways to ensure
that we remember the things that are important to us.
By focusing our learning
strategies on the strengths of the brain's memory systems, we may be able to
learn more information in a shorter amount of time in a way that is useful to
our lives.
The brain is not good at
remembering long lists of unrelated numbers, dozens of nonsense words, or
lengthy grocery lists.
The brain has an extraordinary
ability to remember many events in rich detail. (Ashish Ranpura Yale
University)
The Changing Brain and Memory
Suppose you
learn a new manual skill, such as playing the guitar.
After months of
steady practice, you take a look at your hands---they have not grown or shrunk,
except for maybe a new callus or two.
But your brain
has changed—it has been quietly recruiting new neuron populations to support
your guitar-playing skill.
In particular, the cortical maps
for your hands have grown.
Practice Makes Perfect
Why are attention, repetition,
and intensive practice the prerequisites of brain plasticity?
Do we really have to listen to
our teachers, go to class every day, and do homework every night?
In 1890, philosopher and
psychologist William James offered his thoughts to those of us who might have
preferred a lazier route:
"Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never
properly enter into my experience," he wrote. "Why? Because they have no
interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items
which I notice shape my mind - without selective interest, experience is an
utter chaos."
When we approach learning
casually, we're unlikely to become experts, and our brain is unlikely to rewire
itself
References
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Elbert, Thomas, Christo Pantev,
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