Group items tagged

Another study showing the relationship between sleep and memory. "The post-sleep boost in memory accessibility may indicate that some memories are sharpened overnight." (It might be worth reminding your students that a good study strategy includes a complete night's sleep!)

Fascinating set of articles addressing the ways background music impacts memory, attention, mood, and task performance. (Really short version: quiet is usually better, but not for all tasks, and I'm interested in the ways improved mood and sense of control over the environment might counterbalance other distractors.)

Might be relevant to the "typed vs. handwritten notes" debate. Maybe students should be drawing a lot more pictures in their notebooks!

Some potentially interesting implications here for the way we use example objects, visualizations and illustrations when presenting information.

On the GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning website, Patrik Hultberg of Kalamazoo College discusses working memory, long-term memory, and cognitive load, as they relate to course design.

A description of the ACT-R model of memory, with references and a brief discussion of possible applications of the model for teaching.

The additional details which go into good storytelling create more opportunities for the listener to create memories. What are the best stories you tell in teaching your discipline?

A quick list of 8 tips which students could use to learn more deeply. Hat tip to Judy Holdener, for recommending this article.

Good conversation about the ways in which we can use the study of memory and motivation to help us and our students follow through on our intentions to work and study well.

An interesting look at a digital archive set up to capture media and memories surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings, and the connections between the digital humanities and public history work.

Written for school teachers (as in grade school, middle school, etc.), this article is not 100% relevant to pedagogical discussions in higher ed. However, the article got me thinking about how I still learn; what gets me intellectually excited; and what diverts me away from other activities in the interest of pursuing an idea. Could I turn one of these instances into an example for my students in order to show them my thought processes and how I go about exploring new pedagogical possibilities? Just et al. (2014) (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102976) shook the biology/paleobiology world when the discovery of two strange deep-sea species hinted at the possibility of a new phylum. I spent hours reading various accounts of this discovery, including a number of trusted blogs. I compared the article's figures of these enigmatic organisms with other figures in old references I pulled old off my shelves. I referred to dusty old descriptive texts to refresh my memory of basic taxonomic classifications. I drew diagrams. Letting my students see this process could be beneficial. Developing a project that might force them to perform similar procedures and then defend their actions, might be difficult, but it could teach them quite a lot about how learning continues.

Interesting implications here for how we schedule review sessions and talk to students about studying. (And probably for our own practices around conferences and research and committee/department meetings...)

The cited article argues that forgetting "enhances flexibility, by reducing the influence of outdated information" and "promot(es) generalization" by preventing us from focusing on too many specific details. So how would your teaching change if you thought of forgetting as a "feature", not just a flaw? (The cited article is at http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30365-3 if the link in the story doesn't work.)

Might be useful to share this interactive guide to distributed practice with your students!

I was particularly interested by the finding that mind wandering which is related to the subject may actually be good for learning - if you ask the questions which encourage the students to wander that way.

What do you do to convince students to study the hard way instead of the easy way? Or what do you do in your course design to make the hard way look easy?