Study Smarter, Not Longer: Blog 3 of 7 - Chunking

One of my students’ favorite learning strategies is chunking – breaking down the information you need to learn into manageable chunks.  Here is why it works:  when you are studying you are using your short-term or working memory and you have to keep working with the material to get it transferred to your long-term memory.   Two things are important to know about your working memory:

1.       Information does not permanently stay there.  Your goal is to work with it enough to get it into your long-term memory which you will access during an exam.

2.       You can only work with 7 plus or minus 2 items at a time (George A. Miller, 1956, Princeton University, Department of Psychology).

So, what does this mean to you, the learner?

·       You cannot learn multiple pages of lecture notes at a once.  You have to break them down into meaningful chunks and learn each of those.

·       When reading a long textbook chapter, stop after each section and review what you read before moving on.

·       When preparing for an exam covering half a semester’s information you have to see the overview picture and then work with meaningful chunks of the information.  

It is important to note that you are always going between the larger view and the smaller chunks.  You need to see how everything fits together, but also work with the small bits of information to learn.

The next blog will look at the multiple encounters that are needed to really learn something.  Stay tuned!

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First Semester Success: Learning Strategies and  Motivation for Your First Semester (or Any Semester) of College, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available at amazon.com, wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.  Click on the upper right  link.