The science of learning
Last week I attended a one-day workshop entitled The Science of
Learning, which was facilitated by cognitive neuroscientist Dr Itiel
Dror of Southampton University. Itiel is becoming a bit of a celebrity
amongst the e-learning community in the UK as someone who avoids the
grand theories of learning and concentrates instead on practical tips
based on what we know about the brain and how it works (assuming we
really do and this I must place on trust).
Anyway, I thought it would be useful for me to clarify what I took
away from the workshop (which may or may not be what Itiel intended),
as an opportunity for my own reflection and for others to challenge.
So here we go:
1. The brain is a machine with limited resources for processing the
enormous quantity of information received by the senses. As a
result, attention is extremely selective and the brain must rely
on all sorts of shortcuts if it is to cope effectively.
2. Teachers/designers can adopt two strategies to reduce the risk of
learners experiencing cognitive overload: provide less information
(quantitative approach) or take much more care about how this
information is communicated (qualitative approach).
3. It is easier for a person to focus their attention on the desired
point if there is minimal noise (other information) surrounding
it. Reducing noise also reduces context, so a balance needs to be
struck.
4. Overload can be reduced by grouping items/steps (what Itiel calls
'chunking'). Grouping can be accomplished by placing
people/objects/events into categories, or by compressing a number
of procedural steps into one, automatic action. Visually you meay
separate items by space, size or colour. Learners will naturally
employ grouping as a strategy, although they may do this
inappropriately and the process requires effort. Better for the
designer/teacher to present material ready grouped.
5. A side effect of grouping is that once the action is completely
familiar (that old 'unconscious competence' phase), the individual
finds it hard to explain how they do it; they lose control over
the process because it has become automatic (so old hands may not
always be the best teachers?). Grouping is essential to our
functioning, but there are obvious dangers, i.e. unhelpful
stereotyping.
6. Individuals use top-down processing to reduce overload. This draws
automatically on their past experience of the particular context,
existing knowledge and intelligence and avoids them having to
evaluate all new information from the bottom up. An example would
be how people can easily read a sentence in which the letters in
each word are jumbled up.
7. Designers/teachers need to take account of the way in which the
information is likely to be encoded and processed - it's not 'what
you teach' but 'what is learned'.
8. Different parts of the brain specialise in different tasks.
Individuals can engage in more than one task at the same time, as
long as each uses a different part of the brain.
9. It's a myth that we only use 5-10% of the brain - we use it all.
10. The brain continues to change throughout our lives, even though we
stop adding new brain cells in our early 20s. Some parts of the
brain are relatively hard-wired (through nature or nurture), some
very plastic. It makes sense to concentrate in recruitment on
finding those people with hard wiring which suits the job, because
no amount of training will sort the problem out later. (Itiel did
not go into detail about those capabilities which tend to be
hard-wired and those which are more plastic - this is clearly
important.)
11. As you grow older the hard-wired capabilities persist - the most
learnable capabilities go first.
12. Language is more than just a means for expressing thought - in
many ways it is thought. If a person is not exposed to any
language in early years, then by the age of seven they are
incapable of learning it.
13. The two sides of the brain really do have different functions (I
thought this was just pop psychology). The left brain concentrates
on language and analytical skills; the right has the spacial
abilities. The left side of the brain controls the right side of
the body and vice versa. The left and right sides of the brain do
not interact physically.
14. The size of a person's brain is not an indicator of intelligence.
15. 20% of your blood is in the brain.
16. You never lose anything from long-term memory, just the ability to
retrieve it. Retrieval is a function of how you encode memories /
the number of links you provide.
17. Working memory consists of 7+/-2 items (again I thought this was
pop psychology).
18. To reduce cognitive overload, take out every word or picture that
is not necessary or relevant to your learning goals. Even then,
don't deliver more than the learner can handle (presumably by
modularising the learning).
19. Provide the learning when it is needed, not before.
20. Be consistent in the manner of your presentation, e.g. the
interface.
21. Be consistent in the level of your presentation, i.e. not too
complex, not too simple. Try to work with homogeneous groups;
better still personalise the learning.
22. Engage the learner by grabbing their attention, allowing them to
determine their progress, providing constructive feedback,
introducing an element of excitement/surprise.
23. Be careful of allowing the learner too much control over the
learning process if they don't have the metacognitive skills, i.e.
they don't know what they know and what they don't know, nor how
best to bridge the gap. Ideally help learners to increase their
metacognitive skills, i.e. learning how to learn.
24. Providing the learner with control over pace and allowing them to
go back and repeat any step is important.
25. The learning benefits by being challenging. Performance targets,
rewards and competition can increase the degree of challenge,
perhaps through the use of games.
So, Itiel, do I pass the test? Have I interpreted the content of the
workshop correctly? Did you teach it in such a way that the most
important points were retained?
More importantly, how useful is this material? Can it help us to
design better learning materials and experiences? Can it help us to
become better learners? What do you reckon?
Labels: instructional design
posted by Clive Shepherd @ 2:16 PM # 11 comments
links to this post
11 Comments:
At 9:56 PM, Anonymous Woman At Mile 0 said...
Intesting ideas on the cognitive processes involved in learning
acquisition.
Thanks for the post.
At 3:10 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Actually, short term memory is probably 4 +/- 1 chunks.
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/46/index.html
At 7:40 PM, Anonymous Steve Rayson said...
Great post Clive, you must have been taking lots of notes!
At 1:45 PM, Anonymous SherriD said...
Really interesting post! Certainly lots to think about and
research. Thanks for this.
At 3:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Hi Clive
The following has been collected from the FCBL0704 group.
Firstly, what an interesting piece!
A few thoughts that were mentioned:
o It is important to allow learners to repeat areas of learning
if necessary to understand and embed what is being learnt
o Learning should be relevant: How to present only information
that is relevant to the user, while at the same time providing
ready access to all additional information the user may need to
complete a task?
o The minuscule nature of attention spans: Studies have shown
that the average attention span is between 15-18 minutes. But
still organisations put on day long courses or present 45
minute training videos. What needs to be done is embrace the 15
minute to constraint and build learning solutions accordingly.
o The chasm between theoretical and applicable knowledge:
Educators should try to present information in the context of
real tasks. Then support the task with additional reference
information. This allows the user to learn inductively or in
other words to learn about features by actually using them to
accomplish real tasks. The task based approach increases
information comprehension and retention
This information certainly could take us down the route of
developing courses that engage and enthuse the learners. Could
this information form the basis of useful guidelines when
producing learning materials/manuals?
At 3:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Hi Clive
The following has been collected from the FCBL0704 group.
Firstly, what an interesting piece!
A few thoughts that were mentioned:
o It is important to allow learners to repeat areas of learning
if necessary to understand and embed what is being learnt
o Learning should be relevant: How to present only information
that is relevant to the user, while at the same time providing
ready access to all additional information the user may need to
complete a task?
o The minuscule nature of attention spans: Studies have shown
that the average attention span is between 15-18 minutes. But
still organisations put on day long courses or present 45
minute training videos. What needs to be done is embrace the 15
minute to constraint and build learning solutions accordingly.
o The chasm between theoretical and applicable knowledge:
Educators should try to present information in the context of
real tasks. Then support the task with additional reference
information. This allows the user to learn inductively or in
other words to learn about features by actually using them to
accomplish real tasks. The task based approach increases
information comprehension and retention
This information certainly could take us down the route of
developing courses that engage and enthuse the learners. Could
this information form the basis of useful guidelines when
producing learning materials/manuals?
At 8:31 PM, Blogger Kevin said...
A good chunk of this is CLT - Cognitive Learning Theory.
Fascinating and immediately applicable theory.
At 6:59 PM, Blogger Clive Shepherd said...
I'd like to thank FCBL0704 (whoever that may comprise) for some
useful points here. I particularly sympathise with your
preference for task-based learning in which
throey/concepts/models are presented as needed. I would be
interested to know your source for the 15 minute attention span
finding.
At 11:05 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Hi Clive,
I'm working with a few others at http://www.taptrainer.com/ on
the Foundation Certificate in Blended Learning. So like some of
the previous posts here are som of our collective thoughts from
FCBL07-
The mind is only able to deal with a tiny proportion of the
data it receives - I think that what Itiel Dror has to say
supports the idea that the course designer's job is to give
learners things to do that are genuine and rich, rather than to
give them things to look at that are genuine and rich
The distinction may seem quite obscure, but you see
"multimedia" materials that have expensive, extensive, and
ultimately distracting graphics (sometimes made with little if
any understanding of effective interface design), alongside
mundane, simple, and unchallenging tasks for learners to do.
All studies that have been conducted show that average
attention span is about 15 to 20 minuets. So surely we should
be designing course with this in mind.
Grouping small 15min topics together sounds good and reading
this article shows that maybe this is the most effective method
of learning
It is important to allow learners to repeat areas of learning
if necessary to understand and embed what is being learnt
Some very interesting points don't know if I agree totally with
rewards.
But definitely should be challenging.
Tariq - you probably disagree with rewarding achievement in
learning because of the organisation we both work for, in the
main we do not reward learning because it is mostly to do with
improving the job you are doing and we have national pay scales
which are not flexible. Even there however some rewards are
gained by passing exam courses - promotion, pay rise, etc. Many
other organisations both large and small do reward their
workforce for improving their skills and therefore adding to
the benefit of the whole company.
I completely agree with you that it should be challenging, far
too many courses I have been on or involved in have been too
weak for the intended audience leaving everyone dissatisfied.
This is often down to too much of a mix of abilities - another
point brought up in the article and commented on by Jon,
however grouping can be hard to achieve effectively as
participants are rarely truthful about their own abilities
either claiming to be better or worse than they actually are.
I think we have all heard the phrase 'Death by PowerPoint' and
have all been there at some stage in our training life. I have
as a trainee many times and must admit now automatically I hear
the word PowerPoint and my eyes glaze over, my jaw slackens and
I start to dribble Okay. Slight exaggeration but not too far
from the mark I think.
The problem I find with our department is they cram the
PowerPoint full of everything they are saying so basically so
it's like that old program Catchphrase .. they end up saying
what you see and it is duller than dull to sit through. I've
never experienced being a death by PowerPoint trainer but would
assume it's duller than dull from that end to.
PowerPoint, like any tool, can be effect if used correctly and
that is where people go wrong so therefore really any training
can have this effect if the method isn't used to it's full
potential and people won't be giving us there full attention or
be using their brains to it's full potential.
I also agree with the point that Educators should present
information in the context of real tasks as this would make it
relevant to the person. I assumed this was common sense.
It is easier for a person to focus their attention on the
desired point if there is minimal noise (other information)
surrounding it. Reducing noise also reduces context, so a
balance needs to be struck. That's why e-learning or webex need
preparation before going through to get maximum benefits of
session
Better for the designer/teacher to present material ready
grouped. I think it should considered during designing
e-learning content or even conducting training that based on
delivering facts, knowledge for easily understanding and for
quick recalling.
Individuals use top-down processing to reduce overload. This
draws automatically on their past experience of the particular
context, existing knowledge and intelligence and avoids them
having to evaluate all new information from the bottom up.
smart way for speeding learning process.
Designers/teachers need to take account of the way in which the
information is likely to be encoded and processed - it's not
'what you teach' but 'what is learned'. That should be part of
teacher performance evaluation checklist.
20% of your blood is in the brain. That reflects the importance
of that organ body.
Be consistent in the level of your presentation, i.e. not too
complex, not too simple. Try to work with homogeneous groups;
better still personalise the learning. Golden rule to be
followed for successful presentation.
Tariq Hussain
Andy Wade
Andy Hyde
Claire-Louise Barnes
Mufarreh Asiri
Jon Brown
At 5:34 PM, Blogger Amy said...
The idea of repetition can't be too heavily stated either.
While memory can hold only a given number of chunks at a time,
what is just as important is how those chunks make it out of
working memory into the long term consolidation process.
I forget the statistics specifically, but the numbers
essentially go:
- to get something from working memory to short term memory,
the information has to be repeated within 30 seconds.
-to get it from short term into long term consolidation, it
must be repeated within 90 minutes.
-From there it actually takes as long as 10 years to fully
consolidate a memory.
And we wonder why one day training where information is
mentioned and then never seen again is lost on our learners...
At 6:45 PM, Anonymous free ps3 said...
Thanks for the nice post!
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