S1E6 - Improving Working Memory

Overview

Teaching: 3 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What are the goals and intended learning outcomes of this session?

Slides

Learning outcomes

• Get a clear understanding of the goals of this session and of the skil the learners are expected to acquire.

What can we do to make more room in working memory?

• Chunking
• Increase background knowledge
• Avoid extraneous cognitive load

Increasing background knowledge

Principle P1: Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning.

How does learning progress?

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

The Carpentries model of skill acquisition

Mental models

Mental model - A collection of concepts and facts, along with the relationships between those concepts, that a person has about a topic or field.

Example: mental model of DNA

Novice vs Competent Practitioner vs Expert

A novice, typically has not yet built a mental model of the field.

A competent practitioner has a mental model that works for many purposes, but will not be very accurate.

Experts’ mental models are much more densely connected. Therefore they can jump directly from a problem to its solution because there is a direct link between the two in their mind.

What facilitates learning?

• It is not only a matter of knowledge
• Help novices build a mental model
• Help learners make connections
• Detect and remedy misconceptions
• Be aware of the limitations of expertise
  • Expert blind spot
  • Fluid representations

Three classes of misconceptions

1. Simple factual errors: These are the easiest to correct.

2. Broken models: We can address these by having learners reason through examples to see contradictions.

3. Fundamental beliefs: These beliefs are deeply connected to the learner’s social identity and are the hardest to change.

Cognitive load

1. Intrinsic cognitive load is the effort associated with a specific topic.

2. Germane cognitive load it is the (desirable) mental effort required to create linkages between new information and old.

3. Extraneous cognitive load is everything else that distracts or gets in the way. Extraneous cognitive load refers to the way information or tasks are presented to a learner.

Attention split effect

Split-attention occurs when learners are required to split their attention between at least two sources of information that have been separated either spatially or temporally.

Challenge: Extraneous cognitive load (10 min)

• Think of the tasks you teach in your lessons/courses. Pick one.

• What would be the extraneous load in performing this task. How can you avoid it?

• Discuss with your partner(s).

Key Points

• Reflect upon concepts around learning, training and teaching.

• Internalize and learn to mentally structure several ideas and concepts related to learning, training and teaching.