memory

Four research-based strategies every teacher should be using [Gonzalez]

On 06/10/2019, in adjunct faculty, assessment, colleges, community colleges, education, faculty, higher education, ideas, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, online learning, pedagogy, research, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Four research-based strategies every teacher should be using — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

[Per Jennifer] Cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal and K-12 teacher Patrice Bain have collaborated on a new book, Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning. In the book, they go into detail about what it looks like when we actually apply four research-based “Power Tools” in the classroom: retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition—which is one we haven’t covered at all on this podcast. Today I’m going to talk with Pooja and Patrice about these strategies, the research behind why they work, and some ways you can start using them right away in your instruction.

Instead of assigning homework to give students practice with course material, give mini-quizzes at the start of each class that ask 3-5 questions about the prior day’s learning. These should either receive no grades or be given a very low point value, because the goal of these is to reinforce the learning, not measure or grade student work.

In her social studies classroom, Bain used to assign homework most nights, and found that not only was she spending up to two hours a night grading it, it also was doing nothing to help students retain information.

Recommended books from RetrievalPractice.org
Check out our recommended books and reports that describe research on the science of learning and provide practical tips for classroom teaching.

.

…plus several others

5 Research-Backed Studying Techniques — from edutopia.org by Edward Kang
Teachers can guide students to avoid ineffective studying habits in favor of ones that will increase their learning outcomes.

Excerpts:

Ineffective techniques include:

Studying for long periods of time
Studying a single subject for a long period of time and repeating phrases over and over to memorize them (known as massed practice)
Reviewing one topic repeatedly before moving onto another topic (blocked practice)
Reading and rereading a text
Highlighting or underlining important concepts in a text and then reviewing
Reviewing notes

The book Make It Stick identifies several research-proven studying techniques.

Pre-test
Spaced practice
Self-quizzing
Interleaving practice
Paraphrasing and reflecting

Wouldn’t this be cool if we could do this? Perhaps this is a piece of our future learning ecosystems. [Christian]

On 05/13/2019, in assessment, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, law schools, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, marketplaces, memory, Michigan, Natural Language Processing (NLP), New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, second screen apps, smart classrooms, smart/connected TV, society, streams of content, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, United States, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Re: the Learning from the Living [Class] Room vision of a next gen learning platform…

…wouldn’t it be cool if you could use your voice to ask your smart/connected “TV” type of device:

“Show me the test questions for Torts I from WMU-Cooley Law School. Cooley could then charge $0.99 for these questions.”

Then, the system knows how you did on answering those questions. The ones you got right, you don’t get asked to review as often as the ones you got wrong. As you get a question right more often, the less you are asked to answer it.

You sign up for such streams of content — and the system assesses you periodically. This helps a person keep certain topics/information fresh in their memory. This type of learning method would be incredibly helpful for students trying to pass the Bar or other types of large/summative tests — especially when a student has to be able to recall information that they learned over the last 3-5 years.

Come to think of it…this method could help all of us in learning new disciplines/topics throughout our lifetimes. Sign up for the streams of content that you want to learn more about…and drop the (no-longer relevant) subscriptions as needed..

We need to tap into streams of content in our next gen learning platform

Pastors, what do you think of these ideas? [Christian]

On 05/12/2019, in assessment, assistive technologies, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, experimentation, faith, ideas, learning theories, memory, pedagogy, society, teaching & learning, tools, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Pastors, what do you think of these ideas?

Summarize your key points and put them up on slides at the end of your sermons (and/or at discussion groups after service)
Summarize your key points and post them to the churches’ websites — including links to resources that you referenced in your sermons (books, devotions, other)
Have an app that folks in your congregation could complete during the sermon (like “fill in the blanks” / missing words or phrases). Or, if you’d prefer that your congregation not have their smartphones out, perhaps you could provide “quizzes” mid-week to assist in information recall (i.e., spaced repetition). That is, people would need to try to fill in the missing phrases and/or words mid-week. Answers would be immediately available if someone asked for them.

Along these lines…should there be more classes in seminary on learning theories and on pedagogy? Hmmm….an interesting thought.

My mom, music, memory, and…Alzheimer’s Disease [Christian]

On 05/01/2019, in Daniel S. Christian, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, music, society, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Through the years, my mom was an incredible person — in a variety of ways. She was a wonderful mother to us, as well as a spouse to my dad. But she was also a wonderful daughter, aunt, grandma, friend, teacher, counselor, investor, and more. She was a philosophical, deep thinker and a person of action — often doing several things at a time (from the moment that she woke up until the time that she finally called it quits at the end of a long day). Amongst other things, she was an incredible musician. After graduating from college, my mom taught classical piano (to kindergarten through 12th graders) decade after decade…well into her 70’s.

But then, like her mom, she developed Alzheimer’s Disease and as things go with Alzheimer’s, things got progressively worse. Fast forward to today, and her short-term memory is now completely gone and the person who she once was continues to increasingly leave us. She lives with my dad in a memory care unit. (My dad has also experienced physical and cognitive decline…though not nearly as much as my mom.) My mom will ask you the same question many times over, as she can’t remember asking you the question before and she can’t recall your answer (for but a moment). She still recognizes us — though for how much longer that will be the case, we’re not sure. She doesn’t use our names nearly as much as she used to.

Below is a picture of my mom at her memory care unit…and, by the way, she didn’t recall that the piano that she was playing on was actually the exact same piano that she used for years to teach kids how to play classical piano.

Mom at the piano - 1

All that said — and as you can tell from watching the video below — she can STILL:

Sight read music (i.e., recognize notes, rhythms, dynamics, etc.)
Play songs she remembers from long ago
Sing along to songs/hymns from years ago
Recognize and/or recall many of the lyrics from songs that she once knew

Wow!

The human mind is absolutely incredible to me! Scary and tragic when it stops working as it once did — but incredible nevertheless.

Glory to GOD in the highest!

Also see:

Changing ‘the tragedy narrative’: Why a growing camp is promoting a more joyful approach to Alzheimer’s — from washingtonpost.com by Tara Bahrampour

Building rapport with students [Agarwal & Lang] + 2 Q’s to ask in the last 5 mins of class

On 04/25/2019, in face-to-face, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, K-12 related, memory, pedagogy, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

An excerpt from a recent e-newsletter from Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D. from RetrievalPractice.org

Want more tips for building rapport with students? We highly recommend Professor James Lang’s series in the Chronicle of Higher Education on how to make the most of:

We love his book, Small Teaching. It’s full of practical teaching strategies and the science behind them. For example, combine retrieval, spacing, feedback, and more with quick and easy Connection Notebooks!

Excerpt from the last 5 minutes of class (emphasis DSC):

Don’t waste them trying to cram in eight more points or call out as many reminders as possible

The minute paper. You can’t wade very far into the literature of teaching and learning in higher education without encountering some version of the Minute Paper, a technique made justly famous by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross in their book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. The Minute Paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students:

What was the most important thing you learned today?
What question still remains in your mind?

Taken together, those two questions accomplish multiple objectives. The first one not only requires students to remember something from class and articulate it in their own words (more about that in a moment), but it also requires them to do some quick thinking. They have to reflect on the material and make a judgment about the main point of that day’s class.

Memory has some similarities to a Google search algorithm…

On 03/13/2019, in attention, Daniel S. Christian, education, Google, learning, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, multimedia, research, by Daniel Christian

Philippians 4:9 New International Version (NIV) — biblegateway.com

⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

James 1:22-25 New International Version (NIV) — from biblegateway.com

²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

From DSC:
The word engagement comes to mind here…as does the association between doing and not forgetting (i.e., memory…recall…creating “mental hooks” to hang future learning/content on…which can ultimately impact our behaviors).

The Lesson You Never Got Taught in School: How to Learn! — from bigthink.com by Simon Oxenham (from 2/15/13)
Psychological Science in the Public Interest evaluated ten techniques for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting and came to some surprising conclusions.

Excerpts:

Practice Testing (Rating = High)
This is where things get interesting; testing is often seen as a necessary evil of education. Traditionally, testing consists of rare but massively important ‘high stakes’ assessments. There is however, an extensive literature demonstrating the benefits of testing for learning – but importantly, it does not seem necessary that testing is in the format of ‘high stakes’ assessments. All testing including ‘low stakes’ practice testing seems to result in benefits. Unlike many of the other techniques mentioned, the benefits of practice testing are not modest – studies have found that a practice test can double free recall!

Distributed Practice (Rating = High)
Have you ever wondered whether it is best to do your studying in large chunks or divide your studying over a period of time? Research has found that the optimal level of distribution of sessions for learning is 10-20% of the length of time that something needs to be remembered. So if you want to remember something for a year you should study at least every month, if you want to remember something for five years you should space your learning every six to twelve months. If you want to remember something for a week you should space your learning 12-24 hours apart. It does seem however that the distributed-practice effect may work best when processing information deeply – so for best results you might want to try a distributed practice and self-testing combo.

Also see:

Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology
John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, Daniel T. Willingham
First Published January 8, 2013 | Research Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Study smart — from apa.org by Lea Winerman; as recommended by Daniel Willingham here
Make the most of your study time with these drawn-from-the-research tips.

Per Willingham (emphasis DSC):

Rereading is a terribly ineffective strategy. The best strategy–by far — is to self-test — which is the 9th most popular strategy out of 11 in this study. Self-testing leads to better memory even compared to concept mapping (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).

Three Takeaways from Becoming An Effective Learner:

Boser says that the idea that people have different learning styles, such as visual learning or verbal learning, has little scientific evidence to support it.
According to Boser, teachers and parents should praise their kids’ ability and effort, instead of telling them they’re smart. “When we tell people they are smart, we give them… a ‘fixed mindset,’” says Boser.
If you are learning piano – or anything, really – the best way to learn is to practice different composers’ work. “Mixing up your practices is far more effective,” says Boser.

Cumulative exams aren’t the same as spacing and interleaving. Here’s why. — from retrievalpractice.org

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Our recommendations to make cumulative exams more powerful with small tweaks for you and your students:

Cumulative exams are good, but encourage even more spacing and discourage cramming with cumulative mini-quizzes throughout the semester, not just as an end-of-semester exam.
Be sure that cumulative mini-quizzes, activities, and exams include similar concepts that require careful discrimination from students, not simply related topics.
Make sure you are using spacing and interleaving as learning strategies and instructional strategies throughout the semester, not simply as part of assessments and cumulative exams.

Bottom line: Just because an exam is cumulative does not mean it automatically involves spacing or interleaving. Be mindful of relationships across exam content, as well as whether students are spacing their study throughout the semester or simply cramming before an exam – cumulative or otherwise.

From DSC:
We, like The Learning Scientists encourages us to do and even provides their own posters, should have posters with these tips on them throughout every single school and library in the country. The posters each have a different practice such as:

Spaced practice
Retrieval practice
Elaboration
Interleaving
Concrete examples
Dual coding

That said, I could see how all of that information could/would be overwhelming to some students and/or the more technical terms could bore them or fly over their heads. So perhaps we could boil down the information to feature excerpts from the top sections only that put the concepts into easier to digest words such as:

Practice bringing information to mind
Switch between ideas while you study
Combine words and visuals
Etc.

The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2018

On 12/18/2018, in accessibility / UDL, education, education reform, ideas, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, memory, policy, society, special needs, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2018 — from educationnext.org

Excerpt:

Every December, Education Next releases a list of the most popular articles we published over the course of the year based on readership.

The article that generated the most interest this year was one that looked at the policy of inclusion, or mainstreaming, in special education. A response to that article was our third most popular article of the year.

Some other popular articles were studies finding that teachers’ impact on non-cognitive skills is 10 times more predictive of students’ longer-term success than teachers’ impact on test scores; an analysis of the effectiveness of instructional coaching for teachers instead of regular professional development; and a look at whether teacher preparation programs can be evaluated based on the learning gains of their graduates’ students.

Other articles collected data on public support for higher teacher pay and greater school spending, the decline in private school attendance by middle school families, and whether states are lowering their proficiency standards.

Here’s the list of 2018’s Top 20 articles…

From DSC:
First of all, an excerpt from an email from RetrievalPractice.org:

Last week, we talked about an activity we call Flash Forward. Simply ask your students these questions:

“Now that you’ve taken this class, what is one thing you want to remember 10 years from now (and why)?”

“How will you remember that one thing? What will you do to make sure you don’t forget?”

Second of all, the topic of remembering something 10 years from now (from some current learning) made me think about obtaining a long-term return on investment (ROI) from that learning.

In the online-based course that I’ve been teaching for a while now, I’m all about helping the students in my classes obtain long-term benefits from taking the class. Grades aren’t the key. The learning is the key!

The class is entitled, “Foundations of Information Technology” and I want them to be using the tools, technologies, services, and concepts (that we learned about) loooooong after they graduate from college! We work on things like RSS feeds, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, building their network, building their personal brand, HTML/web design, Microsoft Excel, the Internet of Things and much more. I want them to be practicing those things, leveraging those tools, pulse-checking their surroundings, networking with others, serving others with their gifts, and building on the foundations that they put into place waaaay back in 201__.

Humans are hardwired to forget. But research shows that strategies like peer-to-peer explanations, regular review, and interleaving can boost retention. pic.twitter.com/0IVVz2M3FJ

— edutopia (@edutopia) December 6, 2018

From DSC:
This is where the quizzing features/tools within a Learning Management System such as Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard Learn, etc. are so valuable. They provide students with opportunities for low-stakes (or no-stakes) practice in retrieving information and to see if they are understanding things or not. Doing such formative assessments along the way can point out areas where they need further practice, as well as areas where the students are understanding things well (and only need an occasional question or two on that item in order to reduce the effects of the forgetting curve).

Awesome study hacks: 5 ways to remember more of what you read [LaDouceur]

On 11/14/2018, in education, engagement / engaging students, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, K-12 related, learning, learning theories, memory, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, reading, student-related, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Awesome study hacks: 5 ways to remember more of what you read — from academiccoachingwithpat.com by Pat LaDouceur; with thanks to Julia Reed for her Tweet on this

Excerpts:

Annotate as you read
Skim
Rewrite key ideas in your own words
Write a critique
List your questions

Reorganizing information helps you learn it more effectively, which is why Rewriting makes the list as one of the top 5 reading study hacks. It forces you to stay active and involved with the text (from DSC: the word “engaged” comes to mind here), to consider arguments and synthesize information, and thus remember more of what you read.

Introducing several new ideas to provide personalized, customized learning experiences for all kinds of learners! [Christian]

On 11/06/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, analytics, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, assistive technologies, attention, blended learning, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), e-readers, education, education technology, elearning, engagement / engaging students, face-to-face, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, interactivity, interface design, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, library / librarians, memory, more voice more choice more control, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, reading, society, special needs, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, universities, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, vendors, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I have often reflected on differentiation or what some call personalized learning and/or customized learning. How does a busy teacher, instructor, professor, or trainer achieve this, realistically?

It’s very difficult and time-consuming to do for sure. But it also requires a team of specialists to achieve such a holy grail of learning — as one person can’t know it all. That is, one educator doesn’t have the necessary time, skills, or knowledge to address so many different learning needs and levels!

Think of different cognitive capabilities — from students that have special learning needs and challenges to gifted students
Or learners that have different physical capabilities or restrictions
Or learners that have different backgrounds and/or levels of prior knowledge
Etc., etc., etc.

Educators and trainers have so many things on their plates that it’s very difficult to come up with _X_ lesson plans/agendas/personalized approaches, etc. On the other side of the table, how do students from a vast array of backgrounds and cognitive skill levels get the main points of a chapter or piece of text? How can they self-select the level of difficulty and/or start at a “basics” level and work one’s way up to harder/more detailed levels if they can cognitively handle that level of detail/complexity? Conversely, how do I as a learner get the boiled down version of a piece of text?

Well… just as with the flipped classroom approach, I’d like to suggest that we flip things a bit and enlist teams of specialists at the publishers to fulfill this need. Move things to the content creation end — not so much at the delivery end of things. Publishers’ teams could play a significant, hugely helpful role in providing customized learning to learners.

Some of the ways that this could happen:

Use an HTML like language when writing a textbook, such as:

<MainPoint> The text for the main point here. </MainPoint>

<SubPoint1>The text for the subpoint 1 here.</SubPoint1>

<DetailsSubPoint1>More detailed information for subpoint 1 here.</DetailsSubPoint1>

<SubPoint2>The text for the subpoint 2 here.</SubPoint2>

<DetailsSubPoint2>More detailed information for subpoint 2 here.</DetailsSubPoint2>

<SubPoint3>The text for the subpoint 3 here.</SubPoint3>

<DetailsSubPoint3>More detailed information for subpoint 3 here.</DetailsSubPoint1>

<SummaryOfMainPoints>A list of the main points that a learner should walk away with.</SummaryOfMainPoints>

<BasicsOfMainPoints>Here is a listing of the main points, but put in alternative words and more basic ways of expressing those main points. </BasicsOfMainPoints>

<Conclusion> The text for the concluding comments here.</Conclusion>

<BasicsOfMainPoints> could be called <AlternativeExplanations>
Bottom line: This tag would be to put things forth using very straightforward terms.

Another tag would be to address how this topic/chapter is relevant:
<RealWorldApplication>This short paragraph should illustrate real world examples
of this particular topic. Why does this topic matter? How is it relevant?</RealWorldApplication>

On the students’ end, they could use an app that works with such tags to allow a learner to quickly see/review the different layers. That is:

Show me just the main points
Then add on the sub points
Then fill in the details
OR
Just give me the basics via an alternative ways of expressing these things. I won’t remember all the details. Put things using easy-to-understand wording/ideas.

It’s like the layers of a Microsoft HoloLens app of the human anatomy:

Or it’s like different layers of a chapter of a “textbook” — so a learner could quickly collapse/expand the text as needed:

This approach could be helpful at all kinds of learning levels. For example, it could be very helpful for law school students to obtain outlines for cases or for chapters of information. Similarly, it could be helpful for dental or medical school students to get the main points as well as detailed information.

Also, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, the system could check a learner’s cloud-based learner profile to see their reading level or prior knowledge, any IEP’s on file, their learning preferences (audio, video, animations, etc.), etc. to further provide a personalized/customized learning experience.

To recap:

“Textbooks” continue to be created by teams of specialists, but add specialists with knowledge of students with special needs as well as for gifted students. For example, a team could have experts within the field of Special Education to help create one of the overlays/or filters/lenses — i.e., to reword things. If the text was talking about how to hit a backhand or a forehand, the alternative text layer could be summed up to say that tennis is a sport…and that a sport is something people play. On the other end of the spectrum, the text could dive deeply into the various grips a person could use to hit a forehand or backhand.
This puts the power of offering differentiation at the point of content creation/development (differentiation could also be provided for at the delivery end, but again, time and expertise are likely not going to be there)
Publishers create “overlays” or various layers that can be turned on or off by the learners
Can see whole chapters or can see main ideas, topic sentences, and/or details. Like HTML tags for web pages.
Can instantly collapse chapters to main ideas/outlines.

Learning Ecosystems

Pastors, what do you think of these ideas? [Christian]

My mom, music, memory, and…Alzheimer’s Disease [Christian]

Memory has some similarities to a Google search algorithm…

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