Knowledge is power. But what powers knowledge? Learning powers knowledge. According to cognitive theories, learning is a mental process that involves changes in people’s mental structure. Our learning is affected by changes in our mental structure. Consequently, changes in our mental structure can facilitate improvement of learning. The different cognitive learning theories provided an explanation on our mental structures and how it helps improve learning and knowledge.
Everything we experience using our senses is recorded in our memory but not everything will be stored, retrieved and used later. Memories or information can be lost in the transmission. These memories or information need to be accessed or retrieved when we are making decisions, problem solving or just interacting with others and our environment. This is the reason why it is vital to encode and store our memories properly. How can it be done? By focusing our attention. This concept helps explain why it is relatively much easier to learn when I was in college as compared to learning now. Comparing three hours allotted to studying in college to the same hours spent studying now, I would have learned more back then. Nowadays, a lot of things are going to my mind or taking my mind away from studying. What’s going on in the world now? Did my friend just go on my ideal vacation? Are my kids learning enough from homeschool? Is my real property tax due today? Back in college, I don’t think of these things. There is no smartphone and accessible internet nor a family to be concerned with. My attention is focused on learning – to study, graduate and apply what I learned.
Attention is a limited resource so it is essential that we have to be selective on which we focus our attention. In whichever stage you are in life, it is important to be able to focus your attention on what is important and also tune out different things in our environment that we don’t need. This practice can ensure that the memories and information we encode are important to us, processed, stored and retrieved when needed – when knowledge needs to be applied and practiced.
As a learner and an educator, I can use the different cognitive theories to optimize my learning, and with designing materials, instructions and activities to ensure and optimize the learners attention. The following are the key approaches to win attention and advance processing of information.
- Divide and conquer. Divide my instruction time to critical learning time and idle time. Critical learning times are at the beginning and the last part will be allotted to activities that facilitate learning- discussions, experience rich activities and explanation should be the focus. Idle times can be used for reviewing previous lessons, or administrative activities.
- Fully loaded. Optimize the learner’s load of information by first identifying their level of expertise, needs and goals. Utilized the identified needs and goals as the basis for learning materials and activities to facilitate the right level of information that will help them achieve the identified goals.
- Double Charge. Utilize the two channels- auditory and visual to deliver the information stronger without information overload. The visual and auditory forms use separate memory space hence instead of competing, they are complimenting. Recall and recognition is also enhanced when both channels are used.
- Drive deeper. Facilitate meaningful analysis of the information by way of words and images with meaning to the learners or association with previous knowledge. This approach can have
Distractions are everywhere. We live in a very distracting world. Learning can only take place if proper attention is given for memory encoding and processing. The cognitive learning theories provide aid to educators and learners on how memory can be successfully encoded and processed to ensure effective storage for retrieval when needed.
Charry's Teaching Odyssey 