Magic of Memory

Magic of Memory

I usually ask students to recollect lessons of their yesteryear classes. Many couldn’t. Classrooms, ventilators, walls, and living things are in their crystal memory, but the crux is in a foggy state or in vague memory. When we read it in the pretext of our indomitable brain power, its quiet amusing. Paul Reber, professor of psychology at Northwestern University says the brain’s memory storage capacity is something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). If your brain works like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours (more than 300 years) of TV shows. Here is the magic of learning. The fundamental understanding of, learning is for a life time and not for academic scores has to be instilled amongst our students to create a resilient environment for learning.

We often confuse memory with learning. Memory is related to but distinct from learning. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skill and memory is the expression of what you’ve acquired; if acquisition occurs instantly, that’s making a memory (APA). Memory is a brain-wide process often referred as distributed processing, a set of encoded neural connections in the brain stored as scattered and the same has to be reconstructed to recollect.

It is equally important to understand the difference between understanding and remembering. It is wrong to perceive that we remember information if we understand what the teachers say or what we read. Beyond understanding, a prerequisite of making learning sustained is our intensity of engagements in activities that will lead to the storage and ultimate retrieval of relevant information from long-term memory.

Historically, VAK Learning Styles and the Learning Pyramid are widely accepted as the common methods of learning. The Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic (VAK) learning styles model was developed by psychologists in the 1920s classified the ways people learn. The VAK learning Style uses the three main sensory receivers Vision, Auditory, and Kinesthetic to determine a person’s dominate or preferred learning style. Later in 1946, Edgar Dale of the National training Laboratories in Betel, Maine developed the Learning Pyramid or Cone of Learning eventually became the founding pillar of learning. It illustrates that active participation in the learning process results in a higher retention of learning.  We will wonder too see the very recent ground work of Lewis Howes called MOM System reiterate our focus on experiences in learning. He says “better memory comes down to three things: motivation, observation, and mechanics, MOM”. 

Experiential Learning

Activity oriented or experiential learning has decisive outcomes both in memorising and producing desired results.  It is evident that new initiatives and schemes of government in education sectors are activity centred and practical oriental. For instance, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) operationalized by Government of India in 2001. The same was rooted in founding philosophies of District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), an initiative by the Government of Kerala in1993. Launched in 2012, Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP), a new initiative of the department of higher education gives thrust on activity based learning. The entire edifice of ASAP Foundation Module (Communication & IT skills Training) is built on the concept gamification. Simply, the process of adding games or game like elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation (Merriam-Webster). Encouraging students to engage in discussions, involved in practical components and even offer platforms to teach others. Specifically, it includes Creative Teaching, Audio & Video Tools, “Real-World” Learning, Brainstorm, Classes Outside the Classroom, Role Play, Introduce Lessons Like a Story, Storyboard Teaching, Stimulating Classroom Environment, Welcome New Ideas, and Puzzles and Games. Trainers are also trained to handle game based modules. Aid of technology enables conducive environment for active learning and thereby creating long term memory. Our experiences with ASAP invariably proved that learning becomes easy and capable for sustainable retention when students are involved in the process and technological aids are utilized productively. It further calls for similar pedagogy for fostering new age learning methodologies.

Let’s delve into the art of memorising learnings.

Technique of Memorizing

We often are envious about some people revitalize past memories especially dates, names, facts etc. even some genius set records in memorizing. For instance, the longest sequence of objects memorized in one minute is 50 and was achieved by Mrunali Gouri Kodhe (India) in Nagpur (2017), David Andrew Farrow is a two-time Canadian Guinness World Record Holder for Most Decks of Playing Cards Memorized in a Single Sighting. A fantasy of Eidetic or photographic memory!  Needless to say, they use certain techniques to memorize things.

It is a usual agreement that we remember things better and remember them longer when we adopt semantic encoding. In a way our memory depends on our ability to connect and precision of coding in terms of audio and visual effects. 

Repetition and Recitation are often blamed as outdated concept of memorizing; but it has umpteen followers and being practiced widely.                  

The scientific fact is that our short-term memory needs to be activated multiple times in order to increase its durability. When we repeat, a certain number of neurons are getting activated.  The more times they repeat an action, the more dendrites grow and interconnect, resulting in greater memory storage and recall efficiency. The Hermann Ebbinghaus learning curve estimates that only 21% of information we learnt is retained after one month of learning. Spaced repetition technique is often referred as a panacea to forgetting.

Organizing things is of paramount importance. The chunking technique is grouping items, finding patterns in them, and organizing the items. In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of information are bound together into a meaningful whole (Neath & Surprenant, 2003).  Further, "Mnemonics" refers to any system or device designed to aid memory–usually, patterns of letters, ideas, or associations, such as ROYGBIV to remember the colors of the rainbow.

Mind palace/ method of loci is the Sherlock of style of memorizing things. In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. This is also known as memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. The link, mind map, tree, acronyms, acrostic, rhyme-keys, key words, storytelling, image-word association, chaining, detailing, visualization, dramatizing, single lining, hand copy, walking, cheat sheet are the age old techniques to memorize things.

Above all, nutritious diet, warmth of exercise and good sleep are inevitable for sharp memory. Psychologist Nicolas Dumay argued that good sleep not only protect our brains from forgetting memories but also helps us retrieve memories better. Researchers found that taking a nap of about 45-60 minutes immediately after learning something new could boost your memory 500%. Supply of oxygen to brain and metabolism catalyse our memory. The National Institute on Ageing observed that aerobic exercise, such as running, is linked with improved memory. Exercise such as this triggers high levels of a protein called cathepsin B, which travels to the brain to trigger neuron growth and new connections in the hippocampus, an area in the brain believed to be critical for memory.

Rather than processing heap of information, micro learning facilitates memorizing and lifelong learning. Mobile learning enables convenience, mobility and virtually enabled understanding which has great probability of retention. Mushrooming of virtual reality kits, learning apps, online tutoring, 3D dimensional techniques, Live scribe smart pen, HP ink cartridges are the visible examples of this pattern of effective learning. Also, exploration into new strategies like Computational Thinking, Crossover Learning, Embodied Learning, Stealth Assessment, and Analytics of Emotions has to be mulled over. It is the need of the hour to probe deeper in this direction.

Industry 4.0 compels us to compete with technologically driven enterprising resources. Time has risen to devise new tools and techniques expediting the process of learning and capacity   of human brain to capture, effectively process data, retain and recollect with more speed and accuracy. It seems a matter of survival even a fallacy revolves around.