Let's Break It Down

Did you know that human memory can remember about seven units of information??

This is known as Miller’s law. The law states that at any given time, the average human can only hold about seven items in their short-term memory.

Short-term memory can be thought of as working memory; it refers to the temporary storage of information or the information we can pay attention to and manipulate. (Working memory is not the same thing as IQ.) Perhaps, this is why the first telephone numbers were seven digits long.

We are in the era of mobile phone numbers, which usually include 10 digit phone numbers. Most of us intuitively, break these 10 digits numbers into groups of two or three to remember them, 98204-67890, 982-046-7890. This is also the reason, why TED talks are 8 minutes or 18 minutes long.

But, what do these numbers mean for educators?

Any lecture or class lesson is a presentation made to students, with the goal of having them comprehend, manipulate, and retain information. Thus, it is important for educators to be aware of the working memory structure in kids while creating curriculum material.

The graph in the header shows how the working memory capabilities change over an individual’s lifespan. The y-axis in the graph shows the number of verbal (spotted bar) and visual (solid bar) items that the average individual can retain in working memory at different ages.

These limits to working memory at each age have implications for teaching; for example, the average eight-year-old would find it difficult to recall more than three verbal items or instructions in class. While a typical adult can hold?between five and nine verbal items in working memory, fewer visual items can be retained (between three and four; Baddeley 2000; Heyes et al 2012).?

This does not mean that your lesson should run for only 5 or 10 minutes, but it does suggest that you should re-engage your audience at their threshold mark.

When you design a lesson plan, stay very conscious to the amount of information you are disseminating in a lesson. During the lesson plan brainstorming session, identify the concepts to be taught in a chapter, then group concepts across different lessons to ensure that students do not experience a cognitive overload of information.?

Within a lesson, ensure that the learning happens as two-way communication between the tutor and the students. All of the learning concepts in a lesson should be supported with visuals, keywords, and animations to aid the learning process. As an Instructional Designer, you should do each task, that a student would be required to do, this will help you understand the smaller subroutines or cognitive steps involved. And you will be able to present instructions such that students can tackle just one component at a time.

Intersperse activities throughout a lesson to give students a chance to apply their new learning and feel successful. When students feel confident about new learning, only then will they be able to build further on it.

What strategies do you use to break down information?