All in For Students
Working memory is an important concept that we’ve referred to in passing in several other Learning Scientist posts. This relatively simple concept influences how we think about learning and memory, so I wanted to give a brief overview of what working memory is, some theories about working memory, and why it’s important.
Educators are frequently bombarded with new teaching initiatives - advice on techniques to maximise engagement and learning, the latest ‘big thing’ in education. It can be difficult to work out which ideas are genuinely helpful and easy to put into practice, and which are best ignored.
Occasionally, intriguing research findings in Cognitive Psychology get picked up by the media and are blown out of proportion. This usually happens with findings that are unexpected, flashy, and suggest large practical implications.
Today’s weekly digest is motivated by a paper on lecture capture that I (Carolina) am currently co-writing (1). I thought it would be a good idea to put together a digest summarizing the evidence behind the benefits or pitfalls of recording university lectures.
The strategies that we advocate for all have been shown to improve memory, to increase the likelihood or frequency that we will remember something in the future. But today I’m not going to talk about remembering something. Today I want to talk about forgetting.
What better topic to compile resources on when one is doing so very late at night? Ah, sleep, of course! We’ve written in the past about the importance of sleep for memory and cognition, the combined power of sleep and learning strategies,
