Redesigning Teaching for How Memory Works
Monday, February 16th, 2009The spirit of cognitive design is that a little bit of insight into how our minds actually work can profoundly reshape the products and services we sell, the social programs we invest in and even how we manage our organizations. Indeed, designing for how minds work is a major driver of innovation for the 21st century.
Take for example the idea of spaced learning and the novel approach to teaching that supports it. In this approach learning material is presented or studied three times for 20 minutes and each repetition is separated by a 10 minute gap (or space) filled with physical activity.
Learning that is spaced in this way is based on a recent finding from cognitive science that shows long-term memories form best when the network of nuerons encoding the memory is switched on and off multiple times. The key is the time gap or space between stimulations. Doing physical activity (e.g. juggling) instead of another learning task insures that the network is switched off.
The poster child for success with this approach is Monkseaton High School in the UK. Their website has a great overview on spaced learning and the success of their program was recently highlighted in this blog post. There are even interviews on the book, Making Minds, which explores the implications of spaced learning for education.
