What Teachers Can Do to ImproveInformation Processing

 

 

1. Focus specific attention on important concepts. Strategies to accomplish this include both physical techniques (e.g., underlining important ideas, writing them on the chalkboard, flashing them on the computer screen, saying them more slowly or loudly) and psychological techniques (e.g., arousing curiosity by posing an interesting problem).

2. Give students the opportunity to overlearn basic skills. Strategies to accomplish this include practicing them in a gamelike atmosphere and seeing to it that the skills are practiced repeatedly as parts of subsequent lessons once they have been initially mastered.

3. Provide opportunities for meaningful practice. Help the learners see the connection between what they are currently learning and what they already know.

4. Provide opportunities for distributed review and practice. By using a wide variety of examples, you can facilitate both retention and transfer of information and skills.

5. Assign homework and other supplementary activities that will put into practice the preceding guidelines.

6. Be aware of occasions when current information is likely to be confused with previous or future information, and take steps to prevent proactive and retroactive interference.

7. Anticipate what misconceptions are likely to occur and ask questions to probe for them. Then help students overcome these incorrect understandings.

8. Prompt students to go beyond rote memorization. Reduce the incentives to memorize trivia and increase the incentives to integrate and recall useful information. The following are examples of ways to move toward meaningful rather than rote recall of information:

o Ask questions during class that require the application rather than recitation of principles. (When you do this, you'll have to wait longer for an answer, since it's a more complex task.)

o Allow students to use concept maps, diagrams, outlines, or other notes when taking tests.

o Don't ask trivial questions that can easily (or only!) be answered by rote memorization.

o Give credit for "wrong" answers that are accompanied by truly plausible explanations.

9. Once students have completed a unit of instruction, review that material at a later time. You can accomplish this by using review questions on subsequent tests, but you can also accomplish it by seeing to it that the prior subject matter is discussed again and integrated into subsequent units.

10. In general, follow the guidelines in the "What to Do" lists accompanying each step of information processing in this chapter.