10 Preliminaries
that can act as “switches” and turn your ability to learn on and off quite independent of how your
instructor structures your courses. Most of these things aren’tbinaryswitches – they are more like
dimmer switches that can be slid up between dim (but not off) and bright (but not fully on). Some
of these switches, or environmental parameters, act togethermore powerfully than they act alone.
We’ll start with the most important pair, a pair that research has shown work together to potentiate
or block learning.
Instead of just telling you what they are, arguing that they are important for a paragraph or six,
and moving on, I’m going to give you an early opportunity topracticeactive learning in the context
of reading a chapter on active learning. That is, I want you to participate in a tiny mini-experiment.
It works a little bit better if it is done verbally in a one-on-one meeting,but it should still work well
enough even if it is done in this text that you are reading.
I going to give you a string of ten or so digits and ask you to glance at itone time for a count of
three and then look away. No fair peeking once your three secondsare up! Then I want you to do
something else for at least a minute – anything else that uses your whole attention and interrupts
your ability to rehearse the numbers in your mind in the way that you’ve doubtless learned permits
you to learn other strings of digits, such as holding your mind blank, thinking of the phone numbers
of friends or your social security number. Even rereading this paragraph will do.
At the end of the minute, try to recall the number I gave you and write down what you remember.
Then turn back to right here and compare what you wrote down withthe actual number.
Ready? (No peeking yet...) Set? Go!
Ok, here it is, in a footnote at the bottom of the page to keep your eye from naturally reading
ahead to catch a glimpse of it while reading the instructions above^2.
How did you do?
If you are like most people, this string of numbers is a bit too long to get into your immediate
memory or visual memory in only three seconds. There was very littletime for rehearsal, and then
you went and did something else for a bit right away that was supposed tokeepyou from rehearsing
whatever of the string youdidmanage to verbalize in three seconds. Most people will get anywhere
from the first three to as many as seven or eight of the digits right,but probably not in the correct
order, unless...
...they are particularly smart or lucky and in that brief three second glance have time to notice
that the number consists of all the digits used exactly once! Folks that happened to “see” this at a
glance probably did better than average, getting all of the correct digits but maybe in not quite the
correct order.
People who are downrightbrilliant(and equally lucky) realized in only three seconds (without
cheating an extra second or three, you know who you are) that it consisted of the string of odd digits
in ascending order followed by the even digits in descending order. Those people probably got itall
perfectly righteven without time to rehearse and “memorize” the string! Look again at the string,
see the pattern now?
The moral of this little mini-demonstration is that it iseasyto overwhelm the mind’s capacity
for processing and remembering “meaningless” or “random” information. A string of ten measly
(apparently) random digits is too much to remember for one lousy minute, especially if you aren’t
given time to do rehearsal and all of the other things we have to make ourselves do to “memorize”
meaningless information.
Of course thingschanged radicallythe instant I pointed out the pattern! At this point you could
very likely go away and come back to this point in the texttomorrowor evena year from nowand
have anexcellentchance of remembering this particular digit string, because itmakes senseof a sort,
(^2) 1357986420 (one, two, three, quit and do something else for one minute...)