Spring Semester 2019 – Blog #5: How We Learn – Part 1

There are three parts to your memory that are important to learning:

Sensory memory – This is where you decide what to pay attention to, where you minimize or eliminate distractions or give your attention over to them completely.

Short-term or working memory – This is the part of your memory where the learning is happening, but it can only work with 7 + or – 2 bits of information at a time.    Unless you are actively working with the information it will be replaced by new information.   There are a few things to know:

• Because of the limited capacity information needs to be divided or chunked into manageable, logical sections.  (Chunking is one of my students’ favorite study strategies.)
• In a lecture class you are not learning anything, you are simply recording the information the professor is explaining.  As you are writing, the new information is pushing out the old information you are recording.  This is why you have to learn the information on your own after class.

 Long-term Memory – This is the part you use on an exam when you are recalling what you have previously studied.  If the information is not securely and logically stored it will be nearly impossible to retrieve.

To move information from short-term to long-term memory requires four things – repetition, variety, self-testing and being spaced out over time.    Multiple specific strategies will be described in the next blog. But here is a preview:

Repetition – obviously study the material repeatedly

Variety – make note cards, read your notes out loud, use different colored pens or pencils

Self-testing – stop periodically, cover your notes and see what you can remember

Over time – Review your notes after every class and all your notes once a week

*****

First Semester Success, 2nd Edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available as a eBook and hard copy from amazon.com and hard copy from wordassociation.com.  Click on the upper right  link.