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- Memory has been the subject of speculation and wonder

for at least two thousand years.

As early Greek philosophers pondered the workings

of our minds.

And it has only been during the last 100 years or so

that we began to scientifically explore

the biological basis of memory involving neurons

and synapses in the brain, and they form and change

as we age.

This science of the brain has taken great leaps

forward recently with the development

of new imaging technologies

like functional magnetic resonance imagine, or fMRI.

But our study of memory in this course

will not involve the neuro-physiological aspects

of learning because at this point that field

of study doesn't yet inform the day-to-day

practice of teachers.

Rather, we will be learning about the research

emerging from cognitive science which now powerfully

informs us about how we can teach and learn more effectively

So what is cognitive science?

It involves a variety of different research disciplines

including psychology, computer science, linguistics,

artificial intelligence, anthropology, neuroscience,

and philosophy, all striving to understand

through interdisciplinary study how human cognition

and intelligence develops and shapes our behavior.

By studying human behavior and performance,

we can learn much about how memory works

and how deep learning occurs.

We'll begin our study of learning and memory

through the lens of cognitive science

by looking at a simple schematic model,

acknowledging up front that we're simplifying

an enormously complex and dynamic set of processes.

The model we will present is a modified version

of that first published by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968.

Let's start by imagining a science teacher

introducing a lesson about food pyramids and energy flow

to her class.

As she talks and points to images on the Smart Board,

her students initially perceive this auditory and visual

information and store it temporarily in their

sensory registers.

Then if attended to by each student, this information

is moved into what's called short-term memory for processing

Short-term memory can be thought of as our immediate

consciousness of where we do our thinking and reasoning.

Short-term memory holds a limited amount of information

for only short periods of time.

Usually five to 30 seconds.

It is similar to what you might have heard before

as working memory and it can be overloaded.

This overload diminishes student learning,

something we'll discuss in later units.

Next, depending on how the information is processed

in short-term memory, it may or may not be moved

into long-term memory for storage and later use.

An important set of questions we will be addressing

throughout this course is one, how can we help our students

make memories that are enduring and durable?

And two, how can we help our students make memories

that can be transferred to new situations later?

Now let's look in more detail at how the different

components of this model of memory work together

and interact.

Incoming environmental stimuli are picked up by our

senses and enter what are called our sensory registers.

Of course, we do not perceive most of the stimuli

in our environment.

For example, compared to other mammals, our human

auditory sensory range is somewhat limited,

as is our sense of smell.

But our capability to pick up visual information

in our environment is pretty good.

Whatever information we do sense then goes

into our sensory registers and remains

for only a very short time.

Usually measured in fractions of a second.

Then some small proportion of what our

senses perceive is attended to.

And we become aware of it in some conscious way.

Although we certainly perceive our surroundings

in important ways even without becoming

consciously aware.

For example, the tactile pressure of the chair

you might be sitting on right now.

This information filters or bottlenecks,

is what we call selective attention.

In other words, to become aware of sense information

from our surroundings, we must pay attention

to it some way in order to move it into

our short-term memory for processing.

It is crucial to manage our attention in this way.

Otherwise, the world would be as the famous

psychologist William James expressed it,

"One great blooming, buzzing confusion."

This explains why two people can be in the same

sensory environment, yet experience that environment

in sometimes very different ways.

Now let's go back to our three students

sitting in the science class.

All three students will hopefully perceive

the teacher's voice and watch what she is doing.

At least, in the beginning.

So this information will enter into each of their

visual and auditory sensory registers.

What happens next is where things can go right

or wrong from the standpoint of teaching.

For example, one student may quickly become

engrossed in surreptitiously looking at her smart phone.

Another may initially attend to what the teacher is saying,

but then the picture of the lion prompts him

to remember seeing the movie The Lion King,

and he starts thinking about that.

The third student on the other hand,

does what we hope all of our students do most of the time.

Pays attention to the teacher, and actively

engages what is being taught, in this case by taking notes.

For the cell phone using student, there is probably

very little if anything of what the teacher

is doing that enters into the conscious awareness

of her short-term memory.

This student may vaguely sense the teacher talking

but she is not comprehending her in any meaningful way.

This is because the student's attention is focused

on the smart phone.

However, she is paying attention and processing something

in her short term memory, but it's the wrong thing.

The information on her smart phone.

The second student also ends up attending very little

to what the teacher is doing because his focus

is on the thinking about The Lion King.

He's paying virtually no attention to his surrounding

environment but he is attending and cognitively

processing in short-term memory the memories

he is retrieving from long-term memory about the movie.

Both students are paying attention and processing

incoming information, but with regard to the wrong things.

Despite their attentiveness, for our purposes as teachers,

they are distracted and off task.

As a quick aside, we'll talk in week three about

self-regulated learning and discuss different forms

of student inattention and distraction

and how to minimize them.

We'll even make the case that mind-wandering

can sometimes be a good thing for the learners

in our classroom.

For now let's go back to our model student

paying attention to the teacher.

She is no doubt processing in short-term memory

what the teacher is conveying by taking notes.

But here's an important insight from a learning standpoint.

At the end of her time paying attention to her teacher

and taking notes, the student may have either

learned very little or possibly a lot.

It will mostly depend on how deeply she was able

to cognitively process what her teacher was presenting

and doing.

In other words, was the student able to meaningfully

link the new information with what she already knew?

Her prior knowledge.

This will be determined by how much she actively

and consciously reaches into her long-term memory

from her short-term memory to retrieve and think about

what she is seeing and hearing from the teacher.

This dialogue between short-term memory

and long-term memory is what will make and store

memories for this new learning.

This is the essence of active learning.

On the other hand, if a student mostly listens

and or watches in a learning environment

without being given the chance to actively process

new information, it likely won't stick

in the form of new and usable memories.

That's even if the students are rapt with attention

because most of their thinking and processing

will still be in short-term memory which soon decays

and is lost.

Unfortunately this happens too often in schools

when students aren't encouraged or required to actively

process what they are meant to be learning.

There are many ways to do this and we will

focus on this in later sessions.

Long-term memory is undoubtedly the most complex

component of our memory system,

so as educators, it is critically important

to understand the basics of how it works.

Something we'll do in the following sessions.

That's because enduring and useful memories

are what we hope results with regards to the essential

concepts and skills we teach all of our students.

We want them to be able to transfer

what they learn in our schools.

The most important learning, anyway, to situations

in their own personal lives and ultimately

to their work and civic lives in the future.

If they can't transfer beyond our classrooms

some important aspects of what we teach them,

does it matter then what we teach them?

Let's review some of the important ideas from this unit.

All of which we hope to deepen your understanding

in the coming weeks.

First, creating long-lasting memories is most successful

when new information is meaningfully linked

to already-existing knowledge in our memories.

Second, the more we process and think about something

new to the learned, the more enduring and retrievable

the memories become.

This most often involves a dialogue between

short-term memory, and long-term memory.

In other words, we have to think to learn.

By actively and consciously processing

new information and experiences.

Our later session about making enduring memories

will explain more in-depth.

Third, if the first two don't happen,

our students can be super attentive and work very hard,

but learn very little in terms of making

durable memories and learning that they can later use.

Finally, short-term memory is limited

in time and capacity and can be overloaded

in a way that limits learning.

We will address this and ways to avoid it in later sessions.

So that's a simple model of how memory works,

and we hope our subsequent sessions will deepen

your understanding of its major features,

always with this question in mind:

How can this developing understanding of how learning

happens be used to enhance my own teaching practice?

- We want all of our students to be successful,

to thrive, to grow, and to feel challenged and supported

as they learn in our schools.

That's not always easy.

Especially with the diversity of children we often teach.

In this session, we will introduce you to

the concept of cognitive load and why being mindful of it

as we design lessons for our students,

can help enhance their learning in many ways,

while at the same time,

avoiding the frustration of overloading them.

Let's begin by reviewing what we learned

about how memories are made in our last session.

Our memory model illustration will help us visualize this.

Recall that learning is mostly about

transferring information that enter short-term memory,

into long-term memory, where it is stored for later use.

It's the dialogue between these two

that causes memories to be formed.

We are only conscious of the information

currently being held in our short-term memory

and we are largely oblivious

to the enormous amounts of information

stored in long-term memory, that is,

until it is retrieved back into short-term memory for use

as we interact with it in the world around us.

Recall too, that we said short-term memory has

limited capacity and duration.

For example, try to remember this number

once it disappears from the screen.

What is it?

Pretty easy to remember, right?

But also notice that it has begun to fade

from your short-term memory already,

unless you've rehearsed it in some way.

Information in short-term memory lasts only a few seconds,

usually less than 30.

Now, let's try to remember this number.

Any luck?

Probably impossible for most of you to remember that one.

Why?

Well, our short-term memory can hold only about seven,

plus or minus two bits of information.

Notice I'm calling this short-term memory,

since it refers to single bits or chunks of information.

You can keep it in short-term memory

by rehearsing it periodically, using the little voice

in your head called phonological loop,

or by visualizing it, using the visual sketchpad.

What's working memory then?

Working memory is holding information in mind

and then manipulating it in some way.

For example, consider this number, a number

your short-term memory has little trouble remembering

once it disappears from the screen.

Got it?

Now, let's do some work with that same number.

Remember, it's seven four eight three two.

Next, take each number in sequence, add one

and then say the resulting five digit number out loud.

What did you get?

Here's what you should have ended up with.

This is clearly harder.

Why?

You had to hold the numbers in your short-term memory

and manipulate or work them in some way.

Hence, we call this working memory.

Here's another example of working memory.

Multiply these two numbers in your head.

43 times 21.

Again, pretty hard to do

because you had manipulate or work

with what was in your short-term memory.

Multiplying 43 by 21.

Most people try this calculation in one or two ways.

Visually or phonologically in their head.

That is, you visualize the numbers in your working memory,

or a little voice in your head recited the numbers

as you tried to do the multiplication.

Some people use both pathways

when they are processing things in working memory.

Others of you might have used a strategy

retrieved from your long-term memory

by breaking the multiplication into parts.

43 times 20 equals 860

plus one times 43 equals 903.

We often augment our working memory

through using long-term memory.

This all means that working memory

is even more limited than short-term memory.

When processing or manipulating information

in working memory,

learners are able to manage fewer items of information,

depending on the type of cognitive processing required.

Sometimes, much less than the seven plus or minus two

chunks of information for the short-term memory.

Now why is all of this important for learning?

Well, it's in working memory where we do our thinking,

decision-making, problem-solving, reasoning,

and just plain making sense of the world around us,

both in terms of incoming sensory information

and what we retrieve from long-term memory.

For example, think about trying to decide

what you want to order at a restaurant.

You will likely process a variety of factors as you decide,

both from your immediate environment, the menu,

what people at the table with you suggest,

what you see or smell in the restaurant,

what the waiter says, and also,

what you retrieve from your long-term memory.

What you ordered before at this place,

what a friend previously recommended,

your dietary restrictions, how hungry you are, and so on.

You might also be distracted by

the conversation going on at the table,

or your cell phone vibrating in your pocket.

All of those things will be held in working memory

at various times as you make a decision about what to eat.

That same thing happens when our students are learning

something new in school.

We take in relevant information

from our learning environment and at the same time,

usually retrieve information from our long-term memory

in order to make sense of what we are seeing or hearing.

But at the same time, we might be distracted

in various ways, which will take up

part of working memory in less-than-productive ways.

Since memories are formed

through that dialogue or active processing

between working memory and long-term memory,

as we discussed in the last session,

having working memory operating at its maximum capacity

is important for optimal learning.

So it is critical

that our students are able to process things

in working memory efficiently and flexibly

without overwhelming its capacity.

This is where the concept of cognitive load comes into play.

Cognitive load is formally defined as

the total amount of mental activity

imposed on working memory in any one instant.

Unfortunately and too often in learning situations,

students can be cognitively overloaded

which significantly impairs their learning.

For example, consider a student studying in her room,

doing history homework.

We hope that a maximal amount

of her working memory is being used

to focus on her reading her history text.

However, if she is partially attending to

any text messages coming through on her cell phone

and is also distracted a bit

by her little sister practicing piano in the next room,

then her working memory available

for paying attention to her history reading, is reduced.

In other words, her cognitive load is high

and her learning becomes less than optimal.

In addition, if the history reading contains

a lot of new vocabulary words,

and requires some prior knowledge she can't easily retrieve

or doesn't have, then what is already a high cognitive load

may actually become overloaded.

And as a consequence, not much learning

will probably happen during the study session.

The same thing can and does happen in classrooms.

The challenge for us all

is that the cognitive load in the same learning environment

can differ from child to child.

Knowing how to diagnose and respond to this

is one key to effective teaching,

since working memory is the gateway to long-term memory

and learning happens best

when it is operating at full capacity

without being overloaded.

As teachers, there is much we can do and even should avoid,

to help our students manage their cognitive load.

For those interested in learning more about cognitive load

and its instructional implications,

please see the teaching strategies section of our MOOC,

under Cognitive Load,

for a variety of suggestions and ideas

about how to translate

the learning concepts in this session,

into teaching strategies for your classrooms.

We'll talk more about working memory and its critical role

in learning in future sessions,

especially when we discuss multi-tasking.

In summary, the take-home message for this session,

is that all learners can process

only a limited amount of information at a time

and it's the active dialogue between working memory

and long-term memory where durable memories are made.

So we need to be mindful of our role

in overloading our students' finite working memory capacity

to process what we want them to, for effective learning.

In addition, we also need to encourage them

to be equally mindful of how and where

they choose to study and learn,

a topic for a future session about self-regulated learning.

The next session, we'll continue

our overview of memory and learning

and we'll be looking at how students' prior knowledge

is a key consideration in designing

effective learning environments.

- Effective teachers start with the learner in mind.

Our first move in designing lessons

and choosing teaching strategies should be to consider

what's already inside the learner's head

as they walk into our classroom.

This is because cognitive scientists agree

that learning is connecting new knowledge

to previously existing knowledge.

In some ways, it's that simple and that complicated.

In the last session we talked about working memory

as the gateway to long-term memory.

What is attended to and processed in working memory

is essential for making permanent memories to use later.

For this session, we will talk about the importance

of what is already in our students memories,

their prior knowledge, beliefs and skills,

and the ways they influence ongoing learning.

Lee Shulman and his book, The Wisdom of Practice,

speaks eloquently to inside out teaching

and connected learning.

He writes, to prompt learning, you've got to begin

with the process of going from inside out.

The first influence on new learning is not what teachers

do pedagogically but the learning that's already inside

the learner.

Any new learning must, in some fashion, connect with

what learners already know.

Prior knowledge is one of the most influential factors

in student learning because new information is processed

through the lens of what they already know, believe,

and can do.

Our students are not blank slates as they walk

into our classrooms.

They come with their own concepts, ideas, beliefs,

values, theories, and attitudes gained through previous

schooling and daily life.

And this head full of previous learning profoundly

influences new learning.

That's why ascertaining, activating, and linking to our

students prior knowledge is so key to effective learning.

Please notice that we mentioned beliefs as part of what our

students come into our classrooms possessing.

Because what a student believes about themselves

as a learner and about learning itself

can greatly influence how effectively they learn or not.

This is an idea we'll delve into during week two

about mindsets.
Let's talk more now about prior knowledge

and how it can help or hinder learning.

If I say the word cardinal, what comes to mind for you?

Some of you probably thought of a bright red bird,

the state bird of Indiana, others a religious figure,

especially if you are catholic.

If you're a sports minded person, you might have imagined

a baseball team from Saint Louis.

A few of you, mathematicians, most likely,

might have conjured the concept of cardinal numbers.

These same eight letters can mean such different things

to different people depending upon our prior knowledge

and experiences.

Our comprehension and sense making of the world around us

in basic ways is prior knowledge dependent.

Now consider this phrase, the notes were sour

because the seam split.

Does this sentence make sense to you?

Probably not.

What about now?

Again, for most of you the picture and word

caused the concept bagpipe to be retrieved from your memory.

This then helped you make sense of that sentence.

However, if you don't know what a bagpipe is

or what a sour note might be, the sentence

still may not make sense.

Now let's look at one more example of how having access

to relevant knowledge influences comprehension

and understanding as well as memory formation and recall.

It's from a classic study done by

Bransford and Johnson in 1972.

We're going to show on the screen a short paragraph.

Please spend a few moments reading it.

Does it make sense to you?

Probably not.

Most people find this passage unintelligible

or, at the least, confusing.

Now look at the sketch that next appears on the screen.

This sketch is of a man serenading his girlfriend

as she leans out of the window of her sixth floor apartment.

The man used balloons to float the speaker

for his microphone up to her so she could hear him sing.

Now please read the passage again.

Now does it make sense to you?

Probably so.

Bransford and Johnson found that without seeing the sketch,

people remembered very little about the story later.

Mainly because they couldn't comprehend it in a way

that linked to their prior knowledge.

For those people given the sketch ahead of time,

it was not only more comprehensible, but when tested later

they remembered much more about the story.

So what's the point of these examples?

If our students have appropriate, retrievable,

and accurate prior knowledge to link new knowledge to,

learning will happen more readily and will stick

in enduring ways.

This is why figuring out our students prior knowledge

is so important to effective teaching.

It's also why choosing readings and problems that can link

in some fashion to our students prior knowledge and skills

is equally important.

If readings contain vocabulary or problems require

analytical skills not possessed by a learner,

then new learning will be very difficult to happen

for two reasons.

The first is that there will be nothing to link to

and the second is that cognitive load will likely increase

and learning then becomes even more compromised.

Sometimes too the prior knowledge of our students

can be misconceived.

They may have already existing inaccurate facts,

ideas, stereotypes, or faulty models and theories

about how the world works that they've developed

from their own lived lives.

This means their learning and certain context

may be hindered or even prevented depending on

the nature of their misconceptions and how robust

those misconceptions are.

For examples of these misconceptions in different subjects

and to learn more about them, please see the teaching

strategies section of our MOOC under misconceptions

for a variety of suggestions and ideas about how to

translate the learning concepts in this section

into teaching strategies for your classrooms.

Meaningful learning is linking new information and knowledge

to already existing conceptual knowledge and skill

routines in our memory.

Without relevant and accurate prior knowledge and skills,

subsequent learning tends to be hindered

because learners might ignore, resist, discount,

or even not recognize important new information

and evidence that conflicts with existing knowledge.

And this can vary from learner to learner

in different contexts.

Our students often need help accessing their relevant

prior knowledge.

Teachers who are aware of their students

existing prior knowledge, whether accurate or not,

can design instruction to connect new information

more effectively with what they already know.

No surprise, our students learning environment

are accurately sensitive to the individual differences

among the learners in it, especially with regard

to their prior knowledge and skills.

Please see our teaching strategy section

under prior knowledge to learn about ways to translate

the concepts in this section into learning designs

for your classroom.

As David Ausubel wrote in one of the first textbooks

written about cognitive science in 1978,

the most important single factor influencing learning

is what the learner already knows.

Ascertain this and teach accordingly.

Our next session will focus on how we can help

our students make durable memories in ways they can use

and apply them when needed later.

- How do we help our students create memories

that last and can be retrieved when they need them?

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham

in his book Why Students Don't Like School

makes the simple but profound statement,

"Memory is the residue of thought."

Let's explore the deeper meaning of what he is saying.

We'll begin by reviewing the elements of the simple

model of memory we described in earlier sessions.

Incoming information is perceived by our senses

and whittled down by our attentional filters.

As this information enters working memory, it can begin

to be processed in interaction with long term memory.

If it's not, within a relatively short period of time,

it will be lost, since our working memory

lasts usually less than 30 seconds.

This is why students can be paying rapt attention

to what is going on around them in class,

like listening to their teacher present a lesson,

but at the end of 15 minutes, not remember much of anything.

How is this possible?

If students haven't engaged and processed in an active way

what they are hearing or seeing, it's simply lost

as it disappears from short term memory.

But what do we mean by process in an active way?

Well, to learn something, that is, to make durable memories,

we need to transfer information

from working memory into our long term memory.

In other words, to link the new to what is already existing

in our memories, as we discussed in the last session.

How do we do this?

Most often by consciously processing it.

This means to think about the new information

entering initially into our working memory

by reaching into long term memory to connect it

meaningfully with prior knowledge and memories.

The more we do this thinking and processing

between working and long term memory,

the more likely it will stick.

Let me give you a simple example.

What comes to mind when I say the word friend?

Take some time to think.

My question initially caused you to think

about the meaning of the word, and then you began

to relate that meaning to other words and concepts.

What does it mean to be a friend?

Who are my friends and how do I know?

Who is my best friend, and so on?

That dynamic network of associations

and connections you conjured is a form of deep processing.

If I then asked you later, do you remember

the word I asked you to think about a few days ago?

You would probably have a good chance of remembering it

because of that act of processing.

On the other hand, you could process

the same word in a shallow way.

I could ask you to count how many letters

the word friend has, and how many vowels,

then have you spell it backwards

and arrange its letters in alphabetical order,

all aspects of the word that are largely

devoid of meaning and context.

You will probably be much less likely later

to remember that friend was the word I asked you about.

Another example of a form of deep processing

would be if I gave you a list of 10 words

and asked you to memorize them in two minutes.

You could probably do it, but it would likely

be easier if you made a story out of them,

a not uncommon mnemonic strategy.

For example, you could imagine a car crashing

through a gigantic stretched out map

and on the other side is a toy top spinning

precariously on a cable floating in midair,

and underneath the top is a policeman standing on one hand

while looking at a pocket watch held up

in his other hand, and he then suddenly spits out

a blue blob that slowly floats away,

or something like that, you get the idea.

The process of thinking about how to connect

the new information, the list of words,

to information from your long term memory in some sort

of narrative is what will make the words more memorable.

This process is often called elaborative rehearsal.

By creating an active dialogue between working memory

and long term memory, by thinking to learn,

we extend, elaborate, connect, modify,

and/or consolidate new memories.

What's created and remains as a result of this thought

are memories, or residues in Willingham's terms,

linked to previously existing knowledge.

Memory is the residue of thought.

The more our students think about what they are learning

by asking themselves questions to link new knowledge to old

and working to put things into their own words,

the more enduring will be the memories they make.

Here's a corollary to this principle of learning,

one that may seem counter-intuitive.

Deep and enduring learning is almost always

effortful and difficult.

Making mistakes and errors,

even being confused can be good for learning,

that is, if in the process of correcting the mistakes,

thinking about the errors, and resolving confusion,

active processing happens in just the way we have described.

These struggles can actually enhance learning.

The cognitive scientists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork

call this desirable difficulties,

intentionally created by teachers.

When learning is easy and not very effortful,

probably not much long-term learning is happening

because the new knowledge is not being as actively

processed and meaningfully linked

to prior knowledge in the learner's memory.

That said, it is important to note that not all forms

of confusion and struggle are always productive,

and not all difficulties are desirable.

Difficulties that engage deeper processing

within the learner's capacities are good.

Difficulties that simply cause learners

to wallow in frustration are not.

You need to be the judge of when desirable

difficulties turn into undesirable ones.

John Dewey in his book Democracy and Education

said over a century ago this about learning,

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn,

"and if the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking,

"learning naturally results."

We have to think to learn if we want our students

to learn in enduring and transferable ways.

As you can imagine, there are numerous instructional

strategies to help our students create long term memories.

Many you no doubt already use.

Please refer to the Teaching Strategies section

under Making Enduring Memories for more examples.

We'll also discuss different forms of deep processing

and thinking to learn in week four of our course.

In the next session we are going to learn

about how memories are retrieved

and what this means for our teaching practices.

- How do we help our students create memories

that last and can be retrieved when they need them?

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham

in his book Why Students Don't Like School

makes the simple but profound statement,

"Memory is the residue of thought."

Let's explore the deeper meaning of what he is saying.

We'll begin by reviewing the elements of the simple

model of memory we described in earlier sessions.

Incoming information is perceived by our senses

and whittled down by our attentional filters.

As this information enters working memory, it can begin

to be processed in interaction with long term memory.

If it's not, within a relatively short period of time,

it will be lost, since our working memory

lasts usually less than 30 seconds.

This is why students can be paying rapt attention

to what is going on around them in class,

like listening to their teacher present a lesson,

but at the end of 15 minutes, not remember much of anything.

How is this possible?

If students haven't engaged and processed in an active way

what they are hearing or seeing, it's simply lost

as it disappears from short term memory.

But what do we mean by process in an active way?

Well, to learn something, that is, to make durable memories,

we need to transfer information

from working memory into our long term memory.

In other words, to link the new to what is already existing

in our memories, as we discussed in the last session.

How do we do this?

Most often by consciously processing it.

This means to think about the new information

entering initially into our working memory

by reaching into long term memory to connect it

meaningfully with prior knowledge and memories.

The more we do this thinking and processing

between working and long term memory,

the more likely it will stick.

Let me give you a simple example.

What comes to mind when I say the word friend?

Take some time to think.

My question initially caused you to think

about the meaning of the word, and then you began

to relate that meaning to other words and concepts.

What does it mean to be a friend?

Who are my friends and how do I know?

Who is my best friend, and so on?

That dynamic network of associations

and connections you conjured is a form of deep processing.

If I then asked you later, do you remember

the word I asked you to think about a few days ago?

You would probably have a good chance of remembering it

because of that act of processing.

On the other hand, you could process

the same word in a shallow way.

I could ask you to count how many letters

the word friend has, and how many vowels,

then have you spell it backwards

and arrange its letters in alphabetical order,

all aspects of the word that are largely

devoid of meaning and context.

You will probably be much less likely later

to remember that friend was the word I asked you about.

Another example of a form of deep processing

would be if I gave you a list of 10 words

and asked you to memorize them in two minutes.

You could probably do it, but it would likely

be easier if you made a story out of them,

a not uncommon mnemonic strategy.

For example, you could imagine a car crashing

through a gigantic stretched out map

and on the other side is a toy top spinning

precariously on a cable floating in midair,

and underneath the top is a policeman standing on one hand

while looking at a pocket watch held up

in his other hand, and he then suddenly spits out

a blue blob that slowly floats away,

or something like that, you get the idea.

The process of thinking about how to connect

the new information, the list of words,

to information from your long term memory in some sort

of narrative is what will make the words more memorable.

This process is often called elaborative rehearsal.

By creating an active dialogue between working memory

and long term memory, by thinking to learn,

we extend, elaborate, connect, modify,

and/or consolidate new memories.

What's created and remains as a result of this thought

are memories, or residues in Willingham's terms,

linked to previously existing knowledge.

Memory is the residue of thought.

The more our students think about what they are learning

by asking themselves questions to link new knowledge to old

and working to put things into their own words,

the more enduring will be the memories they make.

Here's a corollary to this principle of learning,

one that may seem counter-intuitive.

Deep and enduring learning is almost always

effortful and difficult.

Making mistakes and errors,

even being confused can be good for learning,

that is, if in the process of correcting the mistakes,

thinking about the errors, and resolving confusion,

active processing happens in just the way we have described.

These struggles can actually enhance learning.

The cognitive scientists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork

call this desirable difficulties,

intentionally created by teachers.

When learning is easy and not very effortful,

probably not much long-term learning is happening

because the new knowledge is not being as actively

processed and meaningfully linked

to prior knowledge in the learner's memory.

That said, it is important to note that not all forms

of confusion and struggle are always productive,

and not all difficulties are desirable.

Difficulties that engage deeper processing

within the learner's capacities are good.

Difficulties that simply cause learners

to wallow in frustration are not.

You need to be the judge of when desirable

difficulties turn into undesirable ones.

John Dewey in his book Democracy and Education

said over a century ago this about learning,

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn,

"and if the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking,

"learning naturally results."

We have to think to learn if we want our students

to learn in enduring and transferable ways.

As you can imagine, there are numerous instructional

strategies to help our students create long term memories.

Many you no doubt already use.

Please refer to the Teaching Strategies section

under Making Enduring Memories for more examples.

We'll also discuss different forms of deep processing

and thinking to learn in week four of our course.

In the next session we are going to learn

about how memories are retrieved

and what this means for our teaching practices. - How do we help our students create memories

that last and can be retrieved when they need them?

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham

in his book Why Students Don't Like School

makes the simple but profound statement,

"Memory is the residue of thought."

Let's explore the deeper meaning of what he is saying.

We'll begin by reviewing the elements of the simple

model of memory we described in earlier sessions.

Incoming information is perceived by our senses

and whittled down by our attentional filters.

As this information enters working memory, it can begin

to be processed in interaction with long term memory.

If it's not, within a relatively short period of time,

it will be lost, since our working memory

lasts usually less than 30 seconds.

This is why students can be paying rapt attention

to what is going on around them in class,

like listening to their teacher present a lesson,

but at the end of 15 minutes, not remember much of anything.

How is this possible?

If students haven't engaged and processed in an active way

what they are hearing or seeing, it's simply lost

as it disappears from short term memory.

But what do we mean by process in an active way?

Well, to learn something, that is, to make durable memories,

we need to transfer information

from working memory into our long term memory.

In other words, to link the new to what is already existing

in our memories, as we discussed in the last session.

How do we do this?

Most often by consciously processing it.

This means to think about the new information

entering initially into our working memory

by reaching into long term memory to connect it

meaningfully with prior knowledge and memories.

The more we do this thinking and processing

between working and long term memory,

the more likely it will stick.

Let me give you a simple example.

What comes to mind when I say the word friend?

Take some time to think.

My question initially caused you to think

about the meaning of the word, and then you began

to relate that meaning to other words and concepts.

What does it mean to be a friend?

Who are my friends and how do I know?

Who is my best friend, and so on?

That dynamic network of associations

and connections you conjured is a form of deep processing.

If I then asked you later, do you remember

the word I asked you to think about a few days ago?

You would probably have a good chance of remembering it

because of that act of processing.

On the other hand, you could process

the same word in a shallow way.

I could ask you to count how many letters

the word friend has, and how many vowels,

then have you spell it backwards

and arrange its letters in alphabetical order,

all aspects of the word that are largely

devoid of meaning and context.

You will probably be much less likely later

to remember that friend was the word I asked you about.

Another example of a form of deep processing

would be if I gave you a list of 10 words

and asked you to memorize them in two minutes.

You could probably do it, but it would likely

be easier if you made a story out of them,

a not uncommon mnemonic strategy.

For example, you could imagine a car crashing

through a gigantic stretched out map

and on the other side is a toy top spinning

precariously on a cable floating in midair,

and underneath the top is a policeman standing on one hand

while looking at a pocket watch held up

in his other hand, and he then suddenly spits out

a blue blob that slowly floats away,

or something like that, you get the idea.

The process of thinking about how to connect

the new information, the list of words,

to information from your long term memory in some sort

of narrative is what will make the words more memorable.

This process is often called elaborative rehearsal.

By creating an active dialogue between working memory

and long term memory, by thinking to learn,

we extend, elaborate, connect, modify,

and/or consolidate new memories.

What's created and remains as a result of this thought

are memories, or residues in Willingham's terms,

linked to previously existing knowledge.

Memory is the residue of thought.

The more our students think about what they are learning

by asking themselves questions to link new knowledge to old

and working to put things into their own words,

the more enduring will be the memories they make.

Here's a corollary to this principle of learning,

one that may seem counter-intuitive.

Deep and enduring learning is almost always

effortful and difficult.

Making mistakes and errors,

even being confused can be good for learning,

that is, if in the process of correcting the mistakes,

thinking about the errors, and resolving confusion,

active processing happens in just the way we have described.

These struggles can actually enhance learning.

The cognitive scientists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork

call this desirable difficulties,

intentionally created by teachers.

When learning is easy and not very effortful,

probably not much long-term learning is happening

because the new knowledge is not being as actively

processed and meaningfully linked

to prior knowledge in the learner's memory.

That said, it is important to note that not all forms

of confusion and struggle are always productive,

and not all difficulties are desirable.

Difficulties that engage deeper processing

within the learner's capacities are good.

Difficulties that simply cause learners

to wallow in frustration are not.

You need to be the judge of when desirable

difficulties turn into undesirable ones.

John Dewey in his book Democracy and Education

said over a century ago this about learning,

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn,

"and if the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking,

"learning naturally results."

We have to think to learn if we want our students

to learn in enduring and transferable ways.

As you can imagine, there are numerous instructional

strategies to help our students create long term memories.

Many you no doubt already use.

Please refer to the Teaching Strategies section

under Making Enduring Memories for more examples.

We'll also discuss different forms of deep processing

and thinking to learn in week four of our course.

In the next session we are going to learn

about how memories are retrieved

and what this means for our teaching practices.

- In one form or another,

teachers are always asking the question,

what's worth learning, when they make choices

in designing learning experience for their students.

What are the most important concepts skills and attitudes

we want them to develop and use after their time with us?

That's why we work so hard to create

effective learning experiences that we hope will instill

long lasting memories of these essential understandings.

But getting those important learnings

into our student's heads is only half the battle.

They still need to be able to pull them out,

and apply them when needed,

be it in later academic settings,

or in their lives beyond school.

In fact, much of forgetting is simply not being able

to easily call up things we have in memory.

It's often in there,

but we just can't retrieve it when we need it.

And we've all experienced many times

those failures to recall.

So if learning is to lasting and transferable,

meaning that we can apply it under the right conditions

after we have learned it, two things need to happen.

First, the new learning must be securely consolidated

and integrated into our long-term memory

through active learning experiences,

as we discussed in previous sessions of this course.

This requires that we think to learn

in order to make enduring memories

that are solidly linked to our prior knowledge and skills.

Second, the memories need to be readily accessible

through recall cues that are triggered by the circumstances

we want them to be used for.

In other words, how new learning will be used later,

that is under what real world conditions

will it have to be retrieved from memory,

is crucial to consider as we design ways

for new knowledge and skills to be made

into memories in the first place.

Cognitive scientists often say,

think of retrieval during encoding.

Unfortunately, this important aspect

of enduring and transferable learning

is often overlooked in learning designs.

So the rest of this session

will explore the teaching implications

of how we help our students recall the learning

we hope they commit to memory in our classes.

Let's start by my asking you a few questions.

How do you spell your last name?

Who is the current President of the United States?

How many sides to a triangle?

How many planets are in our solar system?

What did you have to eat for breakfast today?

Who is your best friend?

What was your most embarrassing experience as a teenager?

How do you tie your shoes?

What was the plot of the last novel you read?

Each of these questions you no doubt answered

with varying degrees of quickness and certainty.

Some you were able to retrieve almost instantly,

but others took longer to find in your memory.

And still others you had to think about

once you retrieved the relevant memories.

Each one too, had a a different pathway to retrieval.

Some were probably direct and automatic,

while others because of when and how they were formed,

might have required more circuitous path to retrieval.

Questions of this sort can be thought of as retrieval cues.

A cue in the sense that we are talking about here,

is information from our surrounding environment

that causes us to begin the process of memory retrieval.

It could be sensory information, either in a focused way,

like specific smells or sounds,

like the smell of a gymnasium

reminding you of your sports career, or in combination,

the way a person walking and humming in front of you

reminds you of your grandmother.

The cues could also be the words in a book

or a question a teacher asks.

You could also provide the cue yourself,

as when you mentally ask a series of questions

trying to remember the plot of the last novel you read.

For our purposes in this course,

we're going to distinguish two forms of recall

as it relates to memory retrieval,

cued recall and free recall.

By cued recall, we will mean

any specific visual or verbal cue provided to students

intended to elicit a memory.

It could also be a teacher's question asked in class

or written questions on a study guide,

or the information in the student's notes

as he checks his memory to see if he's ready to take a test.

Free recall, on the other hand, is much less specific

in the form of the cue.

For example, a teacher for a reading quiz might ask,

what were the most important ideas

in the homework reading for today?

Or we just spent two weeks of class studying photosynthesis,

what were the key take away understandings?

See how nonspecific these free recall questions are?

It's important to know that free recall

is a lot harder to do.

It simply takes more work to search your memory,

and to respond to those general sorts of cues.

Not only do you have to scan, sort, prioritize

and organize more, processing things in working memory

as you retrieve information,

but you also have to continually be thinking

of retrieval cues in your search.

In other words, once the general free recall prompt

or cue is asked, the learner must provide

the subsequent retrieval cues.

Now here's the really cool thing about free recall

as a way to retrieve memories,

it is very effective as a way to make memories

that last longer and are easier to retrieve.

The cognitive effort required

not only modifies in more specific and organized ways

prior memory being recalled,

but it also allows the learner to develop retrieval cues

for that memory rather than relying on some external cue

like a teacher's verbal question,

a written quiz, or a study guide question.

As long as there's something in memory to recall,

the desirable difficulty of free recall

can be a powerful learning tool.

It's important to note that after any free recall practice,

students need feedback of some sort

to about whether their recall was accurate and complete.

This is crucial, otherwise inaccurate

and/or incomplete memories might be the result,

exactly what we don't want to have happen.

We'll say a lot more about retrieval practice

in weeks three and four when we discuss study skills

and instructional strategies.

Here are a few more things

to keep in mind about retrieval

as we design learning experiences for our students.

First, match memory and coding with memory retrieval.

This goes back to the principle mentioned earlier,

think of retrieval during encoding.

As you design lessons for students to learn new things,

think about under what circumstances they will be asked

to retrieve that information.

For example, if you want your students to write effectively,

what will be the eventual circumstances

they will need to write effectively?

Who will be the audience?

What will be the purpose?

If those questions and context are present,

at least in part at encoding, then when the student

encounters them elsewhere when needed, the more likely

they will be to retrieve the relevant memories.

Next, organization helps retrieval.

If a learner is given the opportunity

to take information already put in memory,

and reorganize it some way

by thinking about connections and relationships,

the more consolidated the memory subsequently becomes,

and the easier it will be to retrieve later.

Likewise, if the learner is made aware

of organizational relationships during memory formation,

the easier it will likely be to retrieve the memories

with more than one retrieval cue.

Next, effective retrieval should take time.

Unless the knowledge to be retrieved

is of a rote learning sort or basic facts on call,

then encouraging students to work hard

at trying to recall things,

as well as giving them time to do so, is important.

This includes questions students are asked in class

by providing wait time for them to retrieve

and process their answer to an impromptu teaching query.

Finally, knowing purpose and meaning make retrieval easier.

When the learner understands the relevance and purpose

of what we are asking them to learn,

it will be better linked to their prior knowledge

during memory formation, and will be more likely

to be readily retrieved thereafter.

Few factors are more important for learning,

both motivationally and cognitively,

then personal meaning and purpose.