For me, attention, and memory, and more importantly, retention, all come down to one critical concept: educational transfer. As an educator, the most important thing to me is that after the class concludes, the students can transfer their knowledge to their lives in a meaningful manner. For example, I am currently designing a 100-level leadership course at my university that I will be teaching next year. So if I want to ensure my students are able to transfer what I teach into their lives, I have to ask myself some questions, like “how will I get my student’s attention and keep it?” and “how can I get my students to retain information so that they properly transfer the educational material of my course outside the classroom?”.
This week, we reviewed the Experiential Learning Theory. In this theory, it is posturized that effective learning happens through experience (Cherry, 2020). The experiential theory proposed by Kolb takes a “more holistic approach and emphasizes how experiences, including cognition, environmental factors, and emotions, influence the learning process” (Cherry, 2020). So, if I want to answer my two prior questions, I need to look at my students holistically, I need to know my audience. At UHart, the majority of students at the 100 level are straight out of high school – ages 17-20. So if I want to keep my student’s attention, I need to look into the values, interests, and typical experiences of a young adult and tailor my delivery to interact with them in a way that resonates with them. And further, if I can keep their attention and engage them, they will be more likely to remember and retain, allowing for educational transfer to occur.
At the end of the day, after all my course material is complete, I need to ask myself “what is the true take away?”, the terminal goal of what I am teaching. I am going to teach all about the psychology of leadership and what it means to be a leader. The two most important concepts where I would like to see transfer occur are the concepts of emotional intelligence, and metacognition – I love how metacognition is being taught in this unit as I believe the act of “thinking about thinking” (Jones, 2020), is one of the most valuable skills a person can have. To reach my students, I need to get on their level and see the world through their eyes, I need to look at them holistically and make sure my learning content reinforces those two terminal goals.
What teaching strategies would best support the hard parts in your own learning environment?
For me, that one strategy is based on the UDL ideology. I'm going to look holistically at my students; I want to remove as many barriers as I can to the learning process to facilitate flow for my students; and I want to represent content and activities through multiple means, promoting autonomy in their studies, allowing my students to learn best based on their learning and engagement preferences/proficiencies.
References:
Cherry, K. (2020, May 15). The experiential learning theory of David Kolb. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/experiential-learning-2795154
Lloyd, D., & Jones, B. (2020). Metacognition - Learn to Learn - Self Regulated Learning - Same Thing or Different?. Teaching Business & Economics, 24(1), 4–7.