Dr. Kosslyn discusses the importance of achieving clear learning objectives and using active learning. He explains its advantages in comparison to traditional lectures.
Video Summary
In this video from Education Summit ’23, Dr. Kosslyn explains that active learning has been proven to increase examination performance and reduce failure rates in traditional lecturing. It is now believed that active learning can benefit STEM students from disadvantaged backgrounds and female students in male-dominated fields. Dr. Kosslyn discusses the effectiveness of active learning, emphasizing the concept that learning and memory are interconnected and must occur simultaneously. The speaker examines the processes involved in both learning and memory and acknowledges that most of what is known about these processes has been systematically applied in education, albeit not in a systematic manner.
Key Points from the Video
🔵 Research shows that people tend to remember more words when they are judged in terms of living things, rather than by their surface properties.
🔵 The principle of “deep processing” versus surface-level processes is important for improving memory retention.
🔵 A large percentage of what we remember is due to incidental memory, where we retain information because we paid attention and thought about it, rather than intentionally trying to memorize it.
🔵 The jigsaw is an active learning technique that consists of breaking up original groups into smaller groups of four people and reassembling them with two representatives from the pro group and two from the con group. This creates groups of four people where they can debate the arguments on both sides and note the strongest and weakest arguments.
🔵 Deliberate practice is recommended to evaluate the work produced by the students, using a rubric to specify the characteristics of a good memo.
🔵 Dual coding, presenting material as both words and images, leads learners to process deeply two different types of information. The speaker provides an example of how mind mapping with spatial and color visual aspects can help organize information.
🔵 Visualizing named objects in the brain leads to visual and verbal memory and is helpful for organization of material into chunks for easy recall.
🔵 People do not always learn better through their preferred learning style. People can have preferences for certain learning styles, but it may not always be effective.
