How Learning Works
How Learning Works
Transcript
What happens in our brains when we learn something new? How do we go from zero understanding to being able to use a concept or skill in our daily lives? I'm gonna introduce you to a three-step process through which learning happens. This is not the whole exhaustive picture, but it gives the big idea and it offers a framework that we can use to build strategies for how to make our brains work better for us in the classroom.
When it comes to learning something new, the process of what happens in our brains is a lot like the process of building a library. Say I'm building my own private library and someone gives me a book about car repair. The first step I'm gonna take is to figure out what I'm holding, to look at the back cover, to read the Table of Contents, to skim the chapters to see what this book is about. That step of reading the book for the first time is what's called encoding. Encoding means forming an impression of something. Taking sensory input and forming a representation, or what's called a memory trace in the brain. It happens in our short-term memory, and it's happening all the time.
Every new experience we have, every new impression that's made on us builds a new memory trace. And because we're forming memory traces all the time, not every memory trace gets kept. Not everything gets moved from short-term to long-term memory.
Think of my library. Anyone who's ever collected anything knows that once people know you're collecting, they start giving you things all the time. And as a collector, it's your job to decide what to keep and what to give away. Once my friends and family know that I'm building my library, they're gonna start giving me books left right and center and I'm gonna have to figure out what's useful and what maybe I'm gonna give back. The way I do that is by figuring out how each new book or each new memory trace helps me in my daily life and how it fits with what's already in my library. As someone who drives cars, knowing how to do things like check tire pressure or change the oil would be helpful, so having a book about how to do those things in my library is going to be useful to me. And to make it as useful as possible, I am gonna want to put it somewhere that makes sense where I can find it easily in the future, if and when I need it. That step of figuring out where in my library this book belongs is what's called consolidation.
Consolidation reorganizes and stabilizes memory traces, gives them meaning, and makes connections to past experiences and to other knowledge already stored in long-term memory. To put that another way, consolidation takes the new information we've taken in and connects it with other ideas that we already have to what we already know drawing on our prior knowledge. For my library, it means taking the book that I've just decided to keep on car repair and recognizing that it probably belongs over there with my old driver's ed manual that I have from high school.
And maybe next to the book of maps that I've got ready for my next car trip. It also means separating the book from what it isn't, say from my collection of cookbooks or my books on art and photography. If step one was reading the book, step two is taking the book and finding a good home. Step three then is finding the book later on, using my library. Say I wake up one morning and the car won't start. If all I had is a huge building full of books piled at random, it would be impossible to find that car repair manual when I needed it. Even if I had taken the time to organize my library, if that book is in a dark, dusty corner that I haven't visited in years, I'm not necessarily gonna know that I have it, let alone where it is the morning that my car won't turn on.
That last step in the learning process is what's called retrieval, finding and using memories. It turns out that the more regularly we retrieve information, the more regularly we circulate the books in our libraries, the faster we'll be able to find the information in the future, and the more deeply we'll understand it. When you think about it, that makes sense. The more frequently I visit each section in my library, the better I'm gonna be able to know what books are on the shelf. Likewise, the more regularly we recall and use information we've learned, the better we'll be able to find it and apply it in the future.
So, the basic learning process: encoding, or taking in new information, consolidating or organizing it and making connections with what we already know, and retrieving, or using information in practice. Understanding how this process works can give us some practical steps to take in learning and more deeply by letting us choose strategies that work with our brains and what our brains are already wired to be doing.
When it comes to learning something new, the process of what happens in our brains is a lot like the process of building a library. Say I'm building my own private library and someone gives me a book about car repair. The first step I'm gonna take is to figure out what I'm holding, to look at the back cover, to read the Table of Contents, to skim the chapters to see what this book is about. That step of reading the book for the first time is what's called encoding. Encoding means forming an impression of something. Taking sensory input and forming a representation, or what's called a memory trace in the brain. It happens in our short-term memory, and it's happening all the time.
Every new experience we have, every new impression that's made on us builds a new memory trace. And because we're forming memory traces all the time, not every memory trace gets kept. Not everything gets moved from short-term to long-term memory.
Think of my library. Anyone who's ever collected anything knows that once people know you're collecting, they start giving you things all the time. And as a collector, it's your job to decide what to keep and what to give away. Once my friends and family know that I'm building my library, they're gonna start giving me books left right and center and I'm gonna have to figure out what's useful and what maybe I'm gonna give back. The way I do that is by figuring out how each new book or each new memory trace helps me in my daily life and how it fits with what's already in my library. As someone who drives cars, knowing how to do things like check tire pressure or change the oil would be helpful, so having a book about how to do those things in my library is going to be useful to me. And to make it as useful as possible, I am gonna want to put it somewhere that makes sense where I can find it easily in the future, if and when I need it. That step of figuring out where in my library this book belongs is what's called consolidation.
Consolidation reorganizes and stabilizes memory traces, gives them meaning, and makes connections to past experiences and to other knowledge already stored in long-term memory. To put that another way, consolidation takes the new information we've taken in and connects it with other ideas that we already have to what we already know drawing on our prior knowledge. For my library, it means taking the book that I've just decided to keep on car repair and recognizing that it probably belongs over there with my old driver's ed manual that I have from high school.
And maybe next to the book of maps that I've got ready for my next car trip. It also means separating the book from what it isn't, say from my collection of cookbooks or my books on art and photography. If step one was reading the book, step two is taking the book and finding a good home. Step three then is finding the book later on, using my library. Say I wake up one morning and the car won't start. If all I had is a huge building full of books piled at random, it would be impossible to find that car repair manual when I needed it. Even if I had taken the time to organize my library, if that book is in a dark, dusty corner that I haven't visited in years, I'm not necessarily gonna know that I have it, let alone where it is the morning that my car won't turn on.
That last step in the learning process is what's called retrieval, finding and using memories. It turns out that the more regularly we retrieve information, the more regularly we circulate the books in our libraries, the faster we'll be able to find the information in the future, and the more deeply we'll understand it. When you think about it, that makes sense. The more frequently I visit each section in my library, the better I'm gonna be able to know what books are on the shelf. Likewise, the more regularly we recall and use information we've learned, the better we'll be able to find it and apply it in the future.
So, the basic learning process: encoding, or taking in new information, consolidating or organizing it and making connections with what we already know, and retrieving, or using information in practice. Understanding how this process works can give us some practical steps to take in learning and more deeply by letting us choose strategies that work with our brains and what our brains are already wired to be doing.