[MUSIC, Title: "What Do Retrieval Practice and Spaced Repetition Have to Do with Mental Models? Or Good Online Teaching?"] [Barb] Birds. I think it's pretty clear we love them! We've discussed mental models as temporary thoughts—like these flocks of birds—involving concepts that students are trying to learn. And we've talked about schemas— those more solidly entrenched frameworks of expertise in long-term memory. But so far, we haven't really explored HOW temporary mental models— like these metaphorically shifting flocks of birds— influence those schemas in long-term memory. The simple concept of retrieval practice—retrieving or recalling information from your long term memory schemas—is key. Great, you might think! Onto some practical ideas for how we can use it. But just this once it will be helpful for you to have a sense of what's happening at a deeper neural level when retrieval practice is occurring. This will help you understand why retrieval practice helps, not just with simplistic rote learning, but with learning and understanding all sorts of complex concepts and phenomena. As you will see, retrieval practice is PARTICULARLY important for online learning, where students can find it more challenging to engage in face-to-face interactions with you and with their peers. Much more on engagement in online teaching, incidentally, next week. Now, you might wonder— doesn't the ability to get information into schemas in long-term memory depend on whether students are learning declaratively or procedurally? Well, yes, it does. After all, consciously deposited links are different from those that are laid because we've done something so often that it's more-or-less habitual. But since a lot of our school-type learning flows, at least initially, through the declarative system, we will focus here on how students get declarative links from conscious thought into their schemas in long-term memory. [David] Declarative learning generally starts with information from outside us that can come from a teacher, a book, a video, another student, or simply stuff happening in the real world. After all, some of the most important things we learn, like how to walk or our first language, we learn just by watching and listening to our families. This incredible deluge of information is quickly filtered and sifted by your brain's neurons— it's like flocks of birds coming into view in your conscious working memory. Working memory is like an octopus with a limited number of arms— four on average—that help gather together the flocks of birds into something meaningful that we can grasp. Yes, we're mixing our metaphors, but hopefully you can forgive us. At least I hope we're mixing metaphors, I don't want to imagine an octopus that can catch a bird! Think of a scene in a movie where a wealthy Victorian era heiress writes a letter revealing she's going to marry a saloonkeeper. That's an event. For the purposes of teaching our course, we can consider that an event is an explanation of a key concept. This means that our educational events are not necessarily as exciting as some movie events—but still, our explanations are events! The mental model students construct in their brain involves their attempts to model—or in some sense understand—the event with their conscious working memory. To clarify—the EVENT is what is happening OUTSIDE the student. The mental MODEL is what is happening INSIDE students' brains as they experience or interact with the event. Remember, researchers' understanding of events has grown from neuroscientists who have examined the flow of events in movies. Movies can eliminate unnecessary material and cut right to the heart of the event in ways that grab our attention. They can also be key advantages to teaching online. Let's give you an example of an online teaching event. Our event is "Why Retrieval Practice with Spaced Repetition Is So Valuable from a Neural Perspective." Feel free to pull out your popcorn, relax, and do your best to just grasp—that is, make a mental model— of the following event. [MUSIC, Interlude: "An Example Event—How Retrieval Practice with Spaced Repetition Strengthens Neural Connections"] [Terry] Here's a picture of one of the most interesting cells in the brain: The neuron. It looks like a plant, doesn't it? It has roots that come out of the bottom here, called "dendrites." These roots have little whiskers on them, called "dendritic spines." A neuron also has something that sprouts out and reaches out to other neurons, called an "axon." Neurons send signals to each other. The electrical signal travels down the axon of the neuron and jumps a small gap, called the "synapse." Some synapses are excitatory and can activate its partner. But others are inhibitory and reduce its activity. When we learn something, it simply means we have created a set of links between neurons that form in long-term memory, in a schema of expertise. Whenever we practice what we've learned, we help strengthen a set of links. And eventually those links become like thick, sturdy links in a necklace. It's much easier to pull well-practiced, sturdy sets of links— that is, ideas or concepts—from our schemas in long-term memory into working memory when we need them. When we first learn something, for example, when a teacher might explain an idea to us, the neural links in long-term memory are very weak. But each time we use our working memory to retrieve an idea, a concept, or skill from the schemas in our long-term memory, it strengthens those sets of links. Repeating this practice over days and weeks is called spaced repetition. Spaced repetition by retrieval practice is the gold standard for long-term learning. With each retrieval, the links get stronger. There are three important ways to remember something. The first is to RETRIEVE it, the second is to RETRIEVE it again later. The third is to wait a while and repeat the process. To summarize: retrieve, retrieve— and, you've got it—RETRIEVE! [MUSIC, Interlude: 'End of the “Retrieval Practice” Example Event'] [Barb] So there you have it, you've just seen our example event about why retrieval practice with spaced repetition is so important. Notice how we boxed in this example retrieval practice event so you could clearly see where it began and where it ended. Incidentally, in our courses, we normally don't indicate the END of an event as we did here. Instead, we just signal the end of an event by putting up the title of the next event, or wrapping up at the end of a video. In this case, we pointed out the beginning and the end of the event because we wanted to be very clear here as to exactly what was contained IN the event. Notice how, just as with a scene in a movie, our careful pre-planning of the event allowed you to more easily grasp the event's essentials. For example, learners' eyes naturally follow the movement of the connecting signals between neurons. A sequence of still images on screen could end up being stored as separate images in memory, making it harder to catch the key idea that a series of neurons LINK TOGETHER over time. This is good, tight online teaching that also takes advantage of the fact that movement attracts attention—more about that next week. To me, this is part of why online teaching is truly a form of art. You can see how you may not have even been conscious of some of your thoughts as you were watching the video and forming your mental model. For example, when you're watching the arm of the octopus reaching out to "grasp" the set of links, you began to anticipate that each grasping attempt would strengthen— that is, darken—the links. When we used a metaphor, for example, saying that neurons were like plants, we subtly activated your schemas involving plants, which gave you a bit of an intuitive feel for the relationship between the parts of the neuron. Incidentally, this is part of why metaphors can be such a powerful tool in learning, and why you want to use them as you're working to convey key ideas to your students. As we mentioned last week, metaphors can help students make connections to related pre- existing ideas in their schemas. When we even just mentioned the word "schema" and the image of a schema appeared, it would have reminded you of our previous discussions of schemas. In other words, in Terry's discussion, he activated your schema about schemas by mentioning the word and showing the picture! Online teaching is a balancing act. When you're first going online naturally you want to just do the best you can if it helps at all. In my first videos online, I was so frightened of the camera that I looked like I was staring down the barrel of a shotgun. With practice though, your procedural system will help you get used to the camera, speaking easily in front of the camera can become a habit. Part of what we want to do in our course is to not just encourage your online teaching. It is also to encourage you to up your game. Great online teaching can teach concepts efficiently AND well. Even just adding a few outstanding videos to your repertoire can help shift your online coursework from humdrum to riveting. It's probably no surprise to discover that people can learn the key ideas behind surprisingly complex concepts with the right metaphors and good visualizations. Part of the magic of good online teaching is that even if it takes care and time to create a good video event, once you've created that event, you have gold in your hands. You can integrate that video into your teaching and reuse it again and again for years, whether you're teaching face-to-face in a traditional setting, using flipped classes, or teaching synchronously or a synchronously online. But, you might ask, what exactly is going on in working memory? We're SO glad you asked! Follow us to the next video and learn whether you really WANT to find out! [Barb] I'm Barb Oakley, [David] I'm David Joyner, [Terry] I'm Terry Sejnowski. [All] Learn it, link it, let's do it!
