Teaching and Processing
As we near the end of our terms, we hope that our students are able to retain major concepts discussed in a meaningful way, for potential applications. I would like to share a couple of articles that address these topics. First, an article this week in Elemental by Smith (2020) entitled, "Why Some Memories Simply Disappear" describes specific ways in which our students process information. The author reminds us of the information processing model (Atkinson & Shifrin, 1971) where "Encoding is closely related to attention, and poor memory is often a reflection of poor attention. At times an event is tied to an emotion that helps to cement it in your brain. Memories that are regularly recalled get stronger over time. Lashbrook (2020) found that smartphones can alter our memories as taking pictures of events dampen memories of them."
Creating opportunities for students to engage in authentic learning where they are challenged, consider, reconsider and rationalize their approaches is key to information processing. There are many active teaching methods which can facilitate these attributes (I have shared this list of 288 previously). This week Inside Higher Ed reviewed a recent book by McGlynn (2020) [author of the blog Small Pond Science, entitled The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching. In this the author shares active learning approaches which support an information processing model. He states that "there are so many ways to do active learning in huge lecture halls! It’s very common to ask students to
solve problems in class;
to use response systems and have students work with their neighbors;
ask students to discuss problem sets, or
show a short reading or video, and ask students to create a concept map of the ideas.
