www.heyunfeng.com


Search Forum:

Forum Message

Topic: Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning
Posted by: David Moursund
Date/Time: 2014/7/19 10:13:53

You know that your students forget much of what you and they believe they have learned. The subject of “forgetting?has been extensively studied. The research provides a number of approaches you and your students can use to decrease the amount that they forget.
My recent IAE Blog entry, Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning, provides a brief introduction to this field. The ideas are applicable in all academic courses. Here is a section quoted from the blog entry. It describes the learning and forgetting curve in a lecture-based course.

On Day 1, at the beginning of the lecture, you go in knowing nothing, or 0%, (where the curve starts at the baseline). At the end of the lecture you know 100% of what you know, however well you know it (where the curve rises to its highest point).
By Day 2, if you have done nothing with the information you learned in that lecture, didn't think about it again, read it again, etc. you will have lost 50%-80% of what you learned. Our brains are constantly recording information on a temporary basis: scraps of conversation heard on the sidewalk, what the person in front of you is wearing. Because the information isn't necessary, and it doesn't come up again, our brains dump it all off, along with what was learned in the lecture that you actually do want to hold on to!
By Day 7, we remember even less, and by Day 30, we retain about 2%-3% of the original hour! This nicely coincides with midterm exams, and may account for feeling as if you've never seen this before in your life when you're studying for exams - you may need to actually re-learn it from scratch.

The IAE Blog currently contains 294 entries. So far this year, the blog has averaged about 6,000 hits a day. You may enjoy browsing some of the entries. See a complete list of their titles, and links to the individual blogs, at http://iae-pedia.org/IAE_Blog.
Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning is one of 39 topics in the IAE-pedia entry, Brain Science. This site provides brief introductions to many brain science topics that are important to teachers and their students.


Entire Thread

Topic(Point at the topics to see relevant reminders)Date PostedPosted By
     Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning2014/7/19 10:13:53David Moursund
     Re:Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning2015/9/12 4:30:13atclqlhh

Forum Home