Tips for learning retention

Donald Clark Plan B has one of his useful posts that restates well-known (but often neglected) learning principles. It is worth reading, but I follow his advise and summarize it for my own benefit.

Ebbinghaus Curve.

He starts with a classical Ebbinghaus "forgetting curve" that we all learned about in Psychology 101 and then adds:

"The real solution, to this massive problem of forgetfulness, is spaced practice, little and often, the regular rehearsal and practice of the knowledge/skill over a period of time to elaborate and allow deep processing to fix long-term memories. If we get this right, increases on the productivity of learning can be enormous."

Here are some of his tips for for implementation (get the details from his blog post):

1. Self-rehearsal, rehearse the work yourself on a set schedule.
2. Take notes, and rehearse.
3. Blog about it, and respond to comments
4. Repetition, mindfully.
5. Delayed assessment, by the teacher at different intervals.
6. Record material, and make recordings accessible to learners.
7. Games pedagogy, present and assess in games format.
8. Spaced e-learning (ties in with #6).
9. Mobile technology, use cell phones to drip feed information.
10. Less long holidays (not as applicable in South Africa where we do not have the long summer holiday.

Some of these may be difficult to implement at school level, with limited resources and the high work load of teachers. Collaboration may be helpful.