The Digital Sandbox » Teaching and Technology. How Memory Works | coaching learners. How Memory Works Short Term Memory AKA Working Memory Short term memory can hold 5-7 items ; we must rehearse information to keep it in short term memory and use chunking, rhyming, and mnemonics to store it to long term memory for easy retrieval. We need motivation in order to bring attention to learning; we will NOT process information held in short term memory for long term storage unless we deem it relevant and meaningful to us. Long Term Memory Once information has been transferred to long term memory, we no longer need to rehearse it. Forgetting Once information has been transferred to long-term memory, most theorists believe that it is stored there permanently.
There are two major problems related to the use of long-term memory: (1) to transfer the information accurately to long-term memory and (2) to retrieve the information accurately. The hippocampus, a primitive structure deep in the brain, plays the single largest role in processing information as memory. Acquisition Consolidation. How Students Learn. And there are some problems with a daily regimen of benchmark testing. So a daily regime of benchmark testing probably isn't for everyone; but it's something to think about.
Benchmark testing may not be for everyone, nor multiple midterms, but final exams should be. There is a tendency to shy away from finals, sometimes in favor of a noncumulative exam covering only material since the midterm, but cumulative final exams definitely have educational merit. In the first place, a cumulative final exam forces students to review all the material covered in the course, and that review in and of itself enhances learning. Plus, it's an opportunity for the student to put the whole course together, to connect material from the first half with material from the second. An important paper by Lee and Anderson (Annual Review of Psychology, 2013) covers this controversy in detail. They begin by summarizing the arguments for discovery learning: You can see where this is going. And that's it. Anderson, J.
How Students Learn. Social Learning Theory - Web Quest.