Chunking
I teach the blood flow of the heart to my students using this method. They must have it memorized to do well in this module. I have them group the first process of pulmonary circulation and then the systemic circulation. Since I have taught this method I have had a higher success rate with students memorizing and being able to re cite the blood flow.
Since I teach technology we have to break thing apart into chunks. But one thing that I learned that perhaps is to break things further and more as an exercise. For example I have to teach a Certification Prep class for the A+. The students already have had two course dealing with the material. Prior instructors will just have them repeatedly take practice test. I can not obviously go over two classes in one. So while I was going through this training it came to my mind to just break the main board in the computer into 4 quadrants and go into detail. Again breaking it down to smaller logical chunks.
Charles,
this really does help with clarity & understanding on the part of the other.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
We also found that this works when asking a customer for information over the phone. Instead of asking a lengthy sentence, break the sentence into chunks separated by pauses. Works almost every time.
Chunking is not only excellent for memorization but also for facilitating understanding.I always tell my students that if you understand the concepts you will remember the details. Yes, it is a lot easier to remember and recall anatomy by looking at them by system and breaking them down further into smaller groups ( chunks ) for detail.
Jennifer,
and how much better that they nail the pieces of information rather than us overwhelming them with so much info at once.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
You need to break up information into bite size chunks for the students to digest all (or most) of the information you are presenting. We were discussing in class the process of making energy in the cells. This was confusing some of the students so we magnified the situation - how do humans get energy. Which it seemed to make it information more clear to understand.
I use a similar method in what i teach. But it deals with signal flow of audio not blood.
