INFORMATION RETENTION AND PRACTICE

 By: Dr. Armãndo R. Tolliver | EDUCATOR | March 13, 2017

           It has been said that practice makes perfect. Use it or you lose it. Learning something new is hard, especially at the beginning when we are likely to struggle and make mistakes.  The reality is, the only way to learn something new is to practice (Bean, 1912; Finkenbinder, 1913; Baddeley, 2007; Lindsey, Shroyer, Pashler, & Mozer, 2014; Papousek, Pelánek, & Stanislav, 2014; Murre & Dros, 2015). I have never seen anybody become good at a strategy without practice. It may happen, but I have yet to witness it. I doubt that I will see it, because strategy is a discipline. Like any discipline, you have to believe in it and work at it to become skilled; both mindset and effort are required to make progress and become adept at the strategy. The more times we practice, the more we touch the information, the more permanently the information will be stored.

The Curve of Forgetting, originally called the The Ebbinghuas Curve after the German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus who developed it in 1885, demonstrates how we retain or get rid of new information that we take in (Bean, 1912; Finkenbinder, 1913; Baddeley, 2007; Lindse et al., 2014; Papousek et al., 2014; Murre & Dros, 2015). For example, on Monday, at the beginning of a lecture, a student goes in knowing nothing, or 0%. This is where the curve starts at the baseline. At the end of the lecture the student knows 100% of what he or she learned, however well he or she knows it. This is where the curve rises to its highest point. However, if the student does not repeatedly return his or her attention to the information learned in that lecture, did not think about it again, read it again, etc. he or she will have lost 50%-80% of what was learned by Tuesday. The human brain is constantly recording information on a temporary basis: fragments of conversations held throughout the day, what someone said while in the elevator, what was for lunch. The problem is that if a student remembers, say, 50 things in a day, the brain does not automatically know which of these bits of information will be useful in the long run. As a result it sometimes purges that information, along with what was learned in the lecture that he or she actually did want to retain. If the student waits another 24 hours before reviewing the information or practicing the strategy, then he or she will have lost 60%. So, he or she can go from a grade of “A” (100%) to “D” (65%), to “F” (40%) in just 48 hours, and by the end of the month, the student will retain about 2%-3% of the original hour! This coincides with midterm exams, and may account for the student feeling as if he or she has never seen the information before in life when he or she is studying for exams. This could result in the student needing to actually re-learn it from scratch.

This highlights the importance of strategy practice. As teachers, we can change the shape of the curve. A big signal to a student’s brain to hold onto a specific chunk of information is if that information comes up again. When the same thing is repeated, the student’s brain says, "Oh, I remember this, let me hold on to it." When students are exposed to the same information or strategy repeatedly, it takes less and less time to activate the information in the student’s long term memory and it becomes easier for him or her to retrieve the information when it is needed.

Here is the formula I use to make time to practice and review material with students. During instruction, I first ensure learning activities require students to actively process information through well-structured critical-input experiences of guided and independent practice. In processing the information, I first give students tasks that require them to practice examining similarities and differences between concepts. To ensure within 24 hours of getting the information that students spend at least 30 minutes reviewing the information, I assign homework for students to practice new skills and deepen their understanding of new information. This type of extended processing helps to raise the curve almost to 100% again. Next, I allow students to practice identifying errors in thinking as we review the homework. We continue to practice skills, strategies, and processes throughout the week over the same topic in a variety of activities that help them examine the content and strategies in new ways, both individually and collectively. As we move to the next topic, a week later, it only takes 5 minutes or so to reactivate the same material, and again raise the curve. By the time we get to the review before the exam, the students’ brain only needs a few minutes to give them the feedback, "Okay, I know that. I got it."

Often students feel they cannot possibly make time for a review session every day in their schedules, they have trouble keeping up as it is. However, this review is an excellent investment of time. If they do not review, they will need to spend 40-50 minutes re-learning each hour of material later. I ask them, “Do you have the kind of time it takes to re-learn the material. You know that cramming rarely plants the information in your long term memory where you want it and can access it to do assignments during the term as well as be ready for exams, right?”

The key things for me when it comes to student practice are to have knowledge of individual student abilities and the gradual release of responsibility, shifting from teacher dependence to student independence. Let us take a look at an old lesson on genetics, where students were expected to describe Mendelian patterns of inheritance in order to predict phenotypic and genotypic probabilities. This entailed the students first being able to observe me modeling the task to be performed, which provided students with an opportunity to develop an understanding of the process/content through access to my thoughts as I performed the task. This was more useful to students when they did not attempt to assist or take notes. Then, students needed to participate in guided practice opportunities. As a whole group, students lead me through the punnet square process with a new example. I allowed students to direct me through the process, providing students with an opportunity to model for me their developing understanding of the process/content. I made certain to allow students to make mistakes and use those mistakes to formatively assess other students and provide them an opportunity to construct viable arguments and justify them. 
           As we moved through the lesson, students were given a chance to engage in a cooperative practice opportunity. It was easy to know that students were ready for a cooperative practice opportunity when they showed appropriate levels of process/content acquisition. In groups of two, students were given an opportunity to perform the same task, a few times, with new examples. While students were practicing the tasks, I made it a point to circulate the classroom, using student-talk as formative assessment for the purpose of providing positive feedback or re-teaching where appropriate. For the students who struggled in the cooperative setting, I had to repeat the teacher model and the guided practice phase of completing punnet squares. 
           Finally, students were engaged in an independent practice opportunity. In this phase of instruction, students are presented with another new example and are required to demonstrate individual understanding of the process/content. Depending on the content, I generally provide students with homework nightly that requires them to spend half an hour or so every weekday. If we are in review mode, just before an exam, I usually give them with a few videos and provide them a couple of added activities that require them to practice maybe 11⁄2 to 2 hours during weekend. When it comes to homework, many students report barely having time during the week to practice, let alone the weekend. I remind that is okay. It is a lot better than the 2%-3% that would have been retained if had the information or strategies not been reviewed at all. Many students are amazed at the difference reviewing regularly makes in how much they understand and how well they understand and retain material.

Suggested Citation

Tolliver, A. R. (2017). Information Retention and Practice. [Education Project Online]. Retrieved online at http://www.educationprojectonline.com/2017/03/student-practice-and-info-retention.html.

References

Baddeley, A. D. (2007). Essentials of human memory. Hove: Psychology Press.

Bean, C. H. (1912). The curve of forgetting. Press of the New era printing Company.

Finkenbinder, E. (1913). The Curve of Forgetting. The American Journal of Psychology, 24(1), 8-32. doi:10.2307/1413271.

Lindsey, R. V., Shroyer, J. D., Pashler, H., & Mozer, M. C. (2014). Improving students’ long-term knowledge retention through personalized review. Psychological science, 25(3), 639-647.

Murre, J. M., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PloS one, 10(7), e0120644.

Papousek, J., Pelánek, R., & Stanislav, V. (2014, July). Adaptive practice of facts in domains with varied prior knowledge. In Educational Data Mining 2014.