Forgetting Curve. From the article in ICE Blog linked to below: https://icenetblog.royalcollege.ca/2018/04/24/education-theory-made-practical-2-spaced-repetition-theory/
I have been doing a little bit of reading recently about how people learn and remember what they’ve learned. I’m going to try to implement some of these this semester in class. The links below list some resources that explain and support various theories about learning, particularly spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is not that radical an idea so it should be possible to put into practice.
Ordinarily it’s difficult for both students and myself as an instructor because there is no spontaneous inclination to use it.That is, often it seems that students want to learn the new thing, and then move onto the next new thing because it gives them a sense of accomplishment. To implement this I will have to build it into my class plans. I will need to identify, say, three keywords or concepts that are the essence of a particular lesson, and start and end with them; then go back to the next week for a minute or two. After a while I could maybe ask one student in the class to be the responsible person for that session — ask them to identify the keywords that day, and share them with the rest of the class.
Another thing I often hear is that it’s really important to create some kind of immersive experience. It’s very common for teaching experts to emphasize that students learn by doing, not by being lectured to. It’s hard to dispute that. However that takes a bit of just-in-time planning on the part of the instructor, and certainly a lot of effort on the part of the student that maybe they’d rather not make, but I think that is going to be my goal this time.
Amid the horrors of the global health crisis, there has been a small benefit: the need/opportunity to learn about different teaching tools and methods. I hope that I can use some of what I’ve learned this semester, as we (I hope) go back to F2F learning.
Universe of Memory: Common Language Learning Mistakes