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| Imagine it’s the beginning of the second semester, and you’re teaching the next course in a series. You mention the topic covered just last fall- a topic you yourself taught these very students- and they stare at you blankly. How could they forget so soon, you wonder?!
It turns out, the brain is a very efficient machine. It only retains things that have been meaningfully processed. This is why my brother could study his spelling words on the bus ride to school, ace the spelling test first period, but to this day, remains a poor speller. Cramming may pass a test, but it does little for long-term memory or what we might consider actual learning (cognitive colleagues, please be gentle with my interpretation here). In “How Much Do Students Have to Study to Learn a Concept?” our friend Stephen Chew explains that students need to encounter complete information about a concept on at least three different occasions to achieve long-term learning. This underscores why formative feedback is so crucial. Some of us even set aside whole days like “Test Tuesday” or “Throwback Thursday” to give our students further exposure to concepts, with a healthy dose of interleaving and distributed practice. So, next semester, when you encounter students who don’t remember everything you taught them this semester, hopefully, you’ll remember to put Stephen’s suggestions to good use. |