This blog post is part of a series called ‘Something Cool We’ve Learned’. In this series, we’ll be talking about cool new things we’ve come across recently – whether through an online course, a book, an article or something else. We hope by sharing them, you can learn something cool too.
We at Pyxium value learning over anything else. A lot of our time is spent exploring the latest theories and trends in education to unearth the best ways for people to learn. This research uncovers a ton of principles on which to build good educational content, and massively shapes what we offer.
One great lesson we came across was from Daisy Christodoulou’s Teachers vs Tech: The Case for an Ed Tech Revolution. Daisy draws a key distinction between working memory and long-term memory, and how the two work together to help us achieve understanding.
Knowing how these two forms of memory fit together shines a huge light on how we learn, and gives us an invaluable way to filter effective online learning resources from non-effective ones.
Read on to learn more!
Working memory vs long-term memory
The first thing to understand is the difference between working memory and long-term memory.
Working memory is the amount of information you can hold in your mind to complete cognitive tasks. And when it comes to new information, that amount of information is very small.
To see this, try and memorise the following string of numbers – give yourself 5 seconds to do so:
918 273 645 546 372 819 099
Pretty hard, right? When processing new information, research shows people are unable to remember more than 7 new items (in this case numbers) on average, with some research suggesting this is as low as 4.
This really shows the limitations of working memory – how can we process new information effectively if we can only process 4 new things at once?
That’s where long-term memory comes in. Look at the following string of numbers, and again give yourself 5 seconds to memorise as much as you can:
9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90 99
A lot easier, right? You probably got the whole thing after only 5 seconds! This string is actually the exact same string we looked at earlier, but split differently (you can check).
Why the change in processing ability? The reason is due to your long-term memory.
Your long-term memory is almost like a filing system. It stores information you have previously processed in a complex web of connections and patterns, which you can appeal to when working through new cognitive tasks.
In the case above, we hold information already about multiples of 9 in our long-term memory, and we can ‘chunk’ this information together with the new information we are being presented with to derive greater meaning, and greater understanding.
Daisy refers to another example with the word ‘bank’.
If we see the word ‘money’ in a sentence closely followed by the word ‘bank’, the knowledge structure we call up from long-term memory allows us to connect our understanding of money to the word bank and derive the type of bank we are talking about.
If the word ‘river’ is closely followed by the word ‘bank’, our long-term memory knowledge structures allow us to understand the word ‘bank’ not as a place for money but as the side of a river.
So we can see long-term memory plays a huge role in how we can process new information in our working memory – information that will eventually become part of the web of knowledge and understanding making up our long-term memory.
Why this matters for learning
We can apply the lessons above directly to how we should be learning.
When we’re learning new content online the learning should be:
Done in small chunks: If we overpower our working memory, even if we feel like we are processing more information, we won’t be.
Done directly: The content should be clearly presented and the tasks made simple, concise and directly related to the content being learned. We can then focus on the content to be learned, and nothing else. Open ended, minimally guided projects are bad for learning.
Done in a variety of styles: Different methods of learning suit different situations (e.g. diagrams for mechanical processes, equations for mathematical formulae). The information to learn should be presented in the style most easily processable for our working memory.
When we’re deciding what content we should be engaging with online, we can ask ourselves some key questions:
How much previous knowledge do I have in this area? If the answer is very little, you should engage with content teaching you the basics directly – so you can build your long-term memory. If you know a lot already, you can go for more open-ended, project-style content to enrich your understanding.
Is the design of the course suitable for what is being learned? For a coding course, the course should take you line-by-line directly through code, not just through slides. A piano course should directly teach you how to play piano, not just teach you music theory from a talking head.
Am I in the right environment and mindset to learn? If you’re surrounded by distractions, you are likely to overwhelm your working memory, and retain little of what you are trying to learn. Make sure when you’re learning, you’re committed to and focused on the content you are trying to process.
What we’re doing at Pyxium
At Pyxium, we don’t just want to drown you in learning content in the hope you find something useful.
That’s why we quality audit EVERY Pyxium course before we publish it. By doing so, we can ensure we are offering you courses genuinely helping you learn, develop and grow.
We continually review the courses we offer to make sure they still achieve positive outcomes, as we ourselves learn more about what it takes to provide good content.
We’ll also admit we don’t always get it right – if you take a course on Pyxium and don’t feel it really maximises your ability to learn, please get in contact with us! We can then explore better ways to help you learn and achieve what you want to achieve.
And of course, on top of all this you earn pyxies on what you learn, helping you and the world recognise and see the value you are creating by learning and bettering yourself. You can even use pyxies to buy this book!
What are pyxies?
At Pyxium, we’re changing what it means to learn online. When you learn online, you create pyxies. Pyxies are units of a virtual currency you can use to buy things in the Pyxium marketplace, like this book.
Check out this blog post explaining what we do in a bit more detail, and register your interest for free to help us test our product, and start earning pyxies!
