The Science of Learning during a Modified Semester

The modified semester timetable present teachers and students with many learning challenges! Let’s use the science of learning help explore this. To get us started, here's a very quick summary of a scientific model for learning:

• Connections. When learning takes place, connections between neurons grow in strength and number, becoming reinforced.

• Memory. All learning involves the formation of memories. Memories are stored as a web of connections throughout the brain, not as discrete files like in a computer.

• Forgetting. New memories form quickly but those connections also fade quickly without reinforcement. Memories are forgotten when the connections become weak and they become confused with other related memories.

• Consolidation is a process where memories are strengthened, allowing them to be recalled over long periods of time.

• Recall. A web of connections is activated during recall which reconstructs the memory. Weak connections lead to inconsistent webs of neurons being activated.

If you would like to learn more about this, I strongly recommend the book The Art of Changing the Brain. Now let's use these scientific ideas to help us understand how the modified semester schedule affects learning. There are two big differences with our new schedule: long classes compressed into one week and large week-long breaks.

The long class

We had experience with long morning classes last year, but they alternated with short afternoon classes. Now all our classes are long! In my school we started by trying to cover the content of two traditional lessons in one of our long classes (we are already starting to decrease this). How do long classes affect the process of learning? The major effect is that the second lesson (or in general, the subsequent learning) occurs before the consolidation of the initial learning can take place. Normally, strong memories form through a combination of reinforcement, such as repeated in-class use and homework, and consolidation during sleep. Depending on the design of our long lessons, there is a chance that neither of these take place!

The process of consolidation is not well understood. It seems to involve the hippocampus reinforcing connections in the neocortex during mental “downtime”. This can happen during sleep or during quiet wakefulness. Sleep seems to provide an opportunity for the brain to flush out metabolic by-products and adjust the strength of recently used connections. Learn more:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526749/

https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/42/11/zsz184/5543176?login=true

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-sleep-gives-your-brain-a-deep-clean1/

The arrival of subsequent learning before consolidation creates two problems: (1) students are relying on weak connections for their subsequent learning; (2) and subsequent learning interferes with the consolidation of the earlier learning. The result of these problems is confusion in learning!

Solutions for the long class learning problem

• Provide structured downtime or breaks. Have a break or change the task to one that doesn't involve focused, analytical thought. This switches the brain from its executive control network to its default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) (sometimes called switching between its focused thinking mode and diffuse thinking mode). Research suggests that consolidation can take place during these types of breaks. Using technology during a break can reduce the break’s effectiveness by switching students back to their executive control network. The break is more effective for consolidation when there is less focus on external sensory input. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661319300142)

• Recall prior learning. Students should actively recall the earlier learning while working through subsequent learning. Research suggests this can help reduce the amount of memory interference (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13377-x). If learning is treated as discrete pieces of knowledge, with little consideration of the previous, interference is more likely. Learning can feel tough and challenging because the brain is sorting out how to connect new knowledge with prior knowledge; it is suggested that recall helps this sorting process.

• Learning continuity. Create a clear continuum of concepts or skills to be learned during each long lesson and across the week. Avoid small “side topics” that might be interesting but won't be regularly used or reinforced. Also avoid a distinct change during the long lesson to a topic that doesn't rely on the earlier learning. Interesting side note: overlearning (https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4490) can stabilize new learning but hinder subsequent learning! The brain is complex and surprising!

A compressed learning week

A related challenge is the large amount of learning covered in the course each week. This limits the amount of timely feedback a student can receive, especially if the teacher is teaching two courses during that week. It's easy to overlook how valuable the five minutes before or after a traditional class (or during lunches) can be for providing quick help (feedback) to students; those opportunities are much fewer in our compressed schedules. The compressed learning of our week can be thought of as “massed practice” (as it is called in education research) as opposed to “distributed practice” where learning takes place with larger intervals between sessions. Research shows that distributed practice is more effective at forming long-lasting memories (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-13173-022).

An additional challenge comes from homework. If a student has two homework intensive courses in the same week, they might end up being assigned roughly 20 lessons worth of homework, yikes! Many students will not be prepared for this and teachers are often unaware of the workloads from other courses. If students fall back on the familiar “I'll catch up on the weekend” strategy, they might find themselves one full unit behind in their learning!

Solutions for the compressed learning problem

• Opportunities for feedback. Build in routine opportunities for students to get feedback on their learning during the long class. Feedback can take many forms that do not involve teacher marking: cooperative group discussions, think-pair-share activities, multiple choice answer cards, sharing whiteboard work, or our patented blue pen improvement work. More in-class time will be needed to complete or discuss homework.

• Regular review. Add in more opportunities to revisit or apply content learned earlier in the week. This provides distributed practice for students and encourages long-term memory formation. Every time we recall or use a memory, it gets reinforced!

It’s March break every other week!

We have regular one-week gaps in student learning. Learning that is compressed is much less likely to survive this gap. Learning from the Thursday or Friday of the previous week will be especially vulnerable since it has not been reinforced much in class.

Solutions to the bi-weekly March break problem

• Targeted, timely review. Try smaller review segments that take place immediately before the new learning; this will reduce memory interference (see “Recall Prior Learning” above) and be more effective than a large review session on the Monday. Multiple review segments focusing on a core topic that are spaced out (distributed practice) will promote long-term memory formation. The review tasks need to actively engage students and shouldn't just be a written or oral summary, otherwise students will not be activating and reinforcing their memories.

• Topic organization. Wherever possible, organize the content of a unit or topic into one week as opposed to splitting it up over the week-long break. This won't always work and might not be desirable for some topics but could be helpful for others.

• Assessment organization. Aim for shorter, more frequent assessments that fall within the week the content was learned.

• Spiraling. This is an approach to course content that treats the entire course curriculum as a whole rather than as separate units. Topics from each traditional unit of study return repeatedly throughout the course, each time appearing in greater depth or detail. This approach naturally involves not only distributed practice but also interleaved practice (https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-019-00918-4), where pieces of content from different “units” are learned one after another in much closer succession. Both interleaved practice and distributed practice are techniques with strong evidence supporting their effectiveness in learning.

There is Nothing New Under the Sun

None of these educational challenges are new, they are only exaggerated in our new modified semester schedule. Even in a traditional 70-minute class, students have a series of things to learn and the subsequent will interfere with the prior. Immediate feedback and targeted review have always been helpful. I hope you have found this discussion and these suggestions useful. I have really enjoyed (even as a physicist!) learning about how the brain works: I feel I better understand what I am trying to do as a teacher. Good luck with your teaching this semester!