What really makes a difference is for us to be able to offer a little theory, which we will do in this article, and then some concrete suggestions of activities they can use in their classes to break up a particular lecture on a particular day. Research tells us that the brain does not record information like a videocassette recorder. Instead, it handles information by reducing it into meaningful chunks that we call categories. Learning consists of fitting this reduced information into already existing categories or, sometimes, of forming new ones. Categorization determines how a concept is acquired, how it is retrieved from memory, and how it is put to work in abstracting or generating inferences.
Examples are a primary means of making connections between old knowledge and new knowledge.
Their concreteness allows students to draw connections between the new abstract idea or principle and what they already know. Once a new concept has been introduced, students need an opportunity to practice thinking in terms of that concept. Right in a lecture class, you can ask students to generate their own example of the concept, summarize it, write an exam question for it, or explain it to someone else. This approach works with the mind's natural processes, and thus improves learning. Studies on attention span also shed light on why students have difficulty with the traditional lecture format.