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Learner's memory

 

 Education

 

Informing the learner of the objective

The second component of motivating events is the establishment of a relatively specific expectancy concerning the outcome of learning. Often, this more specific outcome must be related to the general motivational state, as when the student is led to see that knowing how to identify microorganisms with a microscope will enable him to detect water impurities. But beyond this, a specific expectancy of the learning outcome of the lesson needs to be established. This is usually done by means of a set which persists throughout the act of learning. The set may be established when the teacher, or the textbook, communicates to the learner what he will be able to do when learning has been completed. Using the example of the microscope again, the student may be told that when learning is completed, he will be able to identify several specified types of microorganisms in pond water. If the lesson is in arithmetic, the communication to the student may establish a set that he will (when learning is complete) be able to divide a fraction by a fraction; if in language, the student may come to realize that he will be able to choose the use of who and whom.

Directing attention

Often, the next event in the lesson is directing attention to the stimuli which are an inherent part of the learning task. In many instances, attention may be directed by simple communications such as "Look at this series of numbers," or "Notice the subject and the verb in this sentence." Of course, this commonly used method assumes that students have already acquired habits of responding to such communications. Young children may not have acquired such habits and therefore will need to learn them as instruction proceeds, using the methods of " behavior modification".

More precise methods of directing attention may also be employed, particularly when selective perception of certain features of the external stimulation is required. When the sounds of letters are being learned by children, for example, greater intensity may be given to sounding of specific letters within syllables, when the sound of the vowel a is to be learned. If the growing parts of a plant are to be identified as an objective of a science lesson, these parts may be separately outlined and labeled in a diagram to which the student refers while making his observations. In the learning of a geometric rule such as "Triangles are similar when two of the angles of each are equal," the angles of two triangles may be outlined heavily in a diagram so that attention is drawn to them.

Stimulating recall

One additional kind of event is often required as a part of instruction, before the new learning actually takes place. As we emphasized earlier in this chapter, various previously learned capabilities (pre¬requisites) need to be made readily accessible in the forefront of the learner's memory. Different means may be employed in instruction to stimulate recall and recovery of these previously learned entities. One can simply say "Remember that you learned how to interpolate values between those shown on a scale"; or "Remember what freezing' means." Communications of this type often accomplish the purpose of making prerequisite learning’s accessible from the student's memory.

Sometimes, however, the recall of necessary capabilities may require more than a simple reminder for instance, when the prior learning has occurred a fairly long time ago or when there has been inadequate opportunity for intervening review. In such instances, a more elaborate event, in which students actively reinstate what has previously been learned, may need to be arranged. Thus, before proceeding with a lesson whose objective is "making personal pronouns agree with verbs," the teacher may first set the task: "Write a list of all the personal pronouns." This list would then be checked over by the students, with feedback from the teacher, to insure that all had fully recalled the pronouns and thus were ready to proceed with the new learning. Or, if the lesson had the objective of "classifying types of urban transportation," the teacher might find it desirable to have the students recall the definition of a city. The students might be asked to "Write an outline to show how the definition of a city applies to (a city shown in an aerial photograph)." Again, this exercise would have the purpose of insuring the accessibility of previously learned capabilities.

Providing learning guidance

At this point in time, the acquisition phase of learning is ready to occur, including the encoding of what is to be learned and its entry into memory storage. Generally speaking, the events that form a part of instruction during this learning phase may be called learning guidance. These events are differentiated in their emphasis, in accordance with the particular kind of learning objective that is intended. Thus, if the learning of verbal information is the intended outcome, the accompanying learning guidance takes the form of a meaningful context; if a rule is to be learned, guidance may be provided by a verbal statement cuing the sequence in which subordinate rules are to be combined; and so on.

The amount of learning guidance provided, that is, the length and complexity of the communication or other form of stimulation, varies with a number of factors in the situation. For example, to a group of bright students ap¬plying newly learned arithmetic rules to verbally stated examples, the teacher may find it desirable to provide a minimal amount of guidance, or none at all, and thus to emphasize " discovery learning." For somewhat less able students, guidance might take the form of "hints" or "prompts," which carefully avoid "giving the answer away." Turning to a different kind of learning, motor skills, it is evident that learning guidance may concern itself with the cuing of the executive subroutine, as in "taking the proper stance." Beyond this, however, verbal guidance is known to be of little use for motor skills; the learner must practice the motor act.

Perhaps the most general common characteristic to be sought in learning guidance is its orientation to the objective. In whatever form it is given, whether as verbal statements, "hints," diagrams, or pictures, its purpose is to insure a form of encoding which will enable the learner later to recover what he had learned and display it as some kind of performance. It is essential that examples of situations are included, which will later be encountered by the student and which become sources of cues to retrieval. Thus, the verbal communication, set of cues, or diagram chosen to provide learning guidance is not to be selected because of its logical or esthetic qualities, but rather because it helps the learner to store and recall what is being learned. In designing this aspect of the lesson, the teacher will find it useful to keep firmly in mind the outcome to be expected, that is, what the student will be able to do when learning is completed.

Enhancing retention

Instructional provisions for enhancing retention and retrieval of what has been learned take the form of spaced reviews. Spacing means requiring recall at reasonable intervals, of a day or more, following the initial learning. It is customary, for instance, to provide a number of examples calling for application of a newly learned capability immediately after learning is completed. Requiring more than two or three review examples is relatively ineffective, however, so long as the examples are to be done immediately. The recall of the learned capability is greatly enhanced, however, when additional examples are spaced in time over days or weeks following the initial learning.

It is desirable for spaced reviews to include a variety of situations. For example, if the student has initially learned to form ratios in connection with areas, the examples employed in spaced reviews might be designed to require application to ratios of distance/time, and voltage/resistance, and weight/volume. If the student has learned to define "legislative" in terms of the national Congress, examples in spaced reviews might require application of the definition to state legislatures and city councils. Variety in examples is known to enhance retention, presumably because it enables the student to acquire additional internal cues which he can use to search his memory.

Promoting transfer of learning

In making use of learning transfer to promote new learning within a course or subject (transfer in the vertical sense), it is essential to provide for the prior learning of prerequisite information and intellectual skills. For this reason, a lesson may include questions or problems which have the double purpose of: (1) probing for the presence of these prerequisite capabilities, and (2) making sure they are currently available in the student's "working memory." Such activities may not always occupy much time, but they are of critical importance in making use of the advantage learning transfer gives to the acquisition of new capabilities.

When transfer of learning to other fields of study or activity (lateral transfer) is aimed for, support is provided by a variety of examples and situations. In large part, transfer of the lateral sort appears to depend upon the effectiveness of memory search and retrieval carried out by the learner when he confronts new situations to which his previously learned capabilities must be applied. Accordingly, the promotion of transfer is brought about by instruction which provides novel tasks for the student, spaced over time, and calling for the use of what has previously been learned. Often, these novel tasks take the form of problem-solving situations undertaking a project, composing an essay, solving a mathematical puzzle, designing an investigation of a natural phenomenon.

Eliciting the performance; providing feedback.

The occasion on which the performance that represents the learning outcome is elicited may, of course, take place as an initial event preceding a series of spaced reviews or transfer tasks. Usually, this event is conceived as a kind of terminal action to the event of learning itself. Regardless of how simple the performance may appear (particularly when one also has in mind transfer to novel situations), it is important to provide an occasion for the display of the performance by the student. Having learned, the student needs to "show what he can do," not only for the teacher's purposes, but for his own learning. The display of the performance needs to be closely coupled with informative feedback, in order for reinforcement to occur. If the student has learned to locate a position on the globe in terms of latitude and longitude, for example, the performance might be elicited by asking him to find the position of the city of St. Louis. When latitude and longitude are reported by the student, he is then given feedback as to whether these are correct or to what extent and in what way they differ from the correct values.

Each external event of instruction is designed to influence one or more of the internal processes of learning.

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