Seven Ways To Help Learning "Stick"

Allow me to teach you something, real quick.  The five most populous cities in Africa are:

Kinshasa

Lagos

Cairo

Giza

Luanda

Got it?

This information is presently swirling through a process in your brain we call working memory. It is sharing that space with several other pieces of information - what you’re reading right now, what time your daughter’s soccer practice is later tonight, the need to stop and pick up milk on the way home from soccer practice, that mess you can see out of the corner of your eye, the humming sound of electrical appliance you didn’t notice until I just pointed it out, and so on.  Anything on your mind or coming into any of your senses right now is all stored in that working memory functional space.

​When it comes to that list of cities I dutifully taught you, you have about a 50% chance of remembering it an hour from now.

Your brain has to juggle EVERYTHING coming in through a function called "working memory."

You have about a 40% chance of remembering it tomorrow.

And you have about a 20% chance of remembering it a week from now.

Those low probabilities of remembering aren’t because you’re bad at learning or because I did a bad job of teaching the list to you.  

Those low probabilities are because forgetting is a predictable and normal thing.

Most information that makes into your working memory is forgotten.  Only so much can be stored there, and your brain has to make decisions on what gets dismissed and what gets to stay.  There isn’t room for everything.

The list of biggest cities in Africa may not make the cut if your brain doesn’t decide that it is important.  You might… forget (gasp!).

If you only need to remember that list of cities for a few minutes, you’re in luck!  You probably will.  That’s what you’re working memory is for - holding onto information for a few seconds or minutes until it isn’t needed anymore.  Chances are, right now, you remember several of them, and could easily remember them longer if you go look at it again.  Your working memory hasn’t given up on the information yet, so it is still there.

​However, if you want to remember this list later today or tomorrow or next week, it’s going to take some effort to move it to your long-term memory.  This is a separate function of the brain where information that IS deemed to be important stays for longer.  Precious little information that makes it into working memory is granted acceptance into long-term memory.  So if you want the list of cities (or any other thing you learn) to "stick," you’ll have to convince your brain to grant it access to long-term memory.
​

If you want to remember anything for more than a few minutes, it's going to take some effort to move the in​formation to your long-term memory.

There are two big ways you can improve the chances that something you learn makes it into your long-term memory, and five big ways I can help improve those chances, too.
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Two ways you can improve your chances of remembering something you Learn

1. Rehearse it over time

If you go revisit that list again an hour from now, your chances of remembering it tomorrow go way up.  If you revisit the list again tomorrow, your chances of remembering it a week from now go way up.  When your brain sees the same information again, it is more likely to be deemed as important enough to transfer into long-term memory.  The more repetitions - as long as they’re adequately spaced - the more likely this becomes.

If I ask you tomorrow, you’ll probably remember a couple of the cities.  Let’s say you remember two.  If I then remind you of the other three, you’re temporarily “refilled” with the full list - two are in your long-term memory, and the other three are back in working memory, with a higher likelihood of passing through this second time.

Each repetition like this, as long as adequately spaced, makes it more likely you’ll remember more of the list.  The key is to do this over intervals of time (wait at least 10 minutes), not all at once.

2. Connect it to something you already know

Here’s a map of the cities:

A few things on the map might make you more likely to remember the cities.  One is that you can see what country they’re in.  You’re probably more familiar with the countries in Africa than the cities, so connecting the cities (new) to their countries (already in long-term memory) is easier for the brain than learning them in isolation.

Your brain is much, much, MUCH more likely to accept something into long-term memory if it can be connected to something that’s already there.  For example, if instead of learning the five biggest cities in Africa, I’d asked you to learn the five biggest cities in the U.S., which are,

New York

Los Angeles

Chicago

Phoenix

Houston

It wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult.  You have heard of these cities and already knew that they were big, so there is a lot of existing knowledge to connect it to.  Your chances of remembering this are much higher.
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Five WAYS I CAN IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF REMEMBERING SOMETHING YOU LEARN

In addition to the things that YOU can do to make it more likely to remember new information, there are somethings that could have been done on MY end to increase your chances of remembering, too.

1 - Predict

​One of the things I could have done to increase your chances of remembering the five most populous cities in Africa is to have had you predict the cities on the list before I showed them to you.  As I said earlier, it is easier to remember and learn new things when we have existing knowledge to connect the new information to.  For the five biggest cities in Africa, you probably don’t have any existing knowledge to connect it to - it’s an information island, so to speak.

One way around the lack-of-connection problem is to create something to connect it to by making a prediction.  Connecting new information to a prediction is the next best thing to connecting it to existing knowledge.  And here’s the crazy part - it doesn’t even matter if your prediction is correct or not - just making the prediction helps enormously.

Chances are you would have correctly had Cairo on your list.  It is a city most people have heard of.  If you had made that prediction first, when you saw Cairo on the list, your brain would have had a mini  celebration - hey! I got that one! - and your brain would remember that mini celebration later, as well as the cause of it.  When you tried to recall the list later, you would probably say Cairo first (remember how I got Cairo right?  I definitely remember that).

Correct predictions give your brain a mini-celebration that increases memory.

Unless you know more about Africa than most people, you probably wouldn’t have had any of the other four on your prediction list.  I probably would have said Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Casablanca for my other four - cities in Africa I hear about more often or learned about at some point.

Upon hearing the real list, my brain would have automatically started to do some work connecting to my predictions.  Ok, the cities on the list are different from what I thought.  I didn’t think about Kinshasa.  I’ve heard of it but didn’t realize it was so big.  Lagos is in Nigeria and I should have guessed that the biggest city in Nigeria would be one of the biggest in Africa.  Luanda I haven’t heard of. Where is that?  *Looks it up*  Angola.  I didn’t realize Angola had a city so big. *Looks into it a bit more*  It has grown very fast in recent years.  Interesting.  It just moved onto the list over Johannesburg, which I would have gotten.

​All of this work is natural; my brain is trying to connect the list to my prediction since there is nothing else to connect it to.  This effort makes memory more likely just from a simple prediction - correct or not.

2 - Surprise

Allow me to teach you something else.  The five biggest cities in Europe, in order, are:

Istanbul

Moscow

London

St. Petersburg

Berlin

You actually have a pretty great probability of remembering this list later because there are several surprises on it.  First, everyone I’ve ever asked this question to - including Europeans - completely forgot Turkey was part of Europe when trying to figure out #1.  That surprise of hearing that a Turkish city is the biggest of all is so surprising that it is very memorable.  St Petersburg and Moscow are similarly surprising - not everyone thinks of Russia as being part of Europe (since so much of the country’s land is in Asia), and seeing two entries, not just one, on the most populous list is surprising indeed.

​Information that is surprising is much easier to remember.  As I said when talking about predictions, I would have been surprised that four of the cities in Africa I guessed were not on the list - and I would be VERY likely to remember that next time I tried (ok, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, and Casablanca are NOT on the list, I remember THAT).  Oftentimes, surprise and predictions go hand in hand.

Surprising information is much more likely to be remembered because the brain deems it to be more important.

3 - Explore Before Explain

Another wonderful way for me to have increased your chances of remembering would have been to let you do some brief exploring on your own BEFORE I came out and told you the list.  In the education lingo, this is called “explore before explain.”  Perhaps I could have told you something like, “today we’re going to be looking at the biggest cities in Africa.  Here is a map of the populations in 2010 and their projections for 2025.  Take a look at the map and spend a few minutes researching some of the biggest cities."
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At this point, you would have gained a little familiarity with the names, maybe seen pictures of some of the cities, and possibly have read a bit about them.  All of this gives you some base of knowledge to connect the upcoming learning.  It also would have given you a low pressure phase of learning whatever you wanted to that would have reduced stress and primed you for my explanation to come.

4 - Remind you of what you already might know

A fourth way I could have increased your chances of remembering this learning is that I could have reminded you of some things you might already know before presenting you with the list.  For instance, I could have said something like:

“Today I want to teach you the list of the five biggest cities in Africa.  Before I do, you probably ALREADY KNOW some things about Africa and population centers that I would like to remind you of.  First, you probably know that the Nile River is a major feature in Africa (<-- connection created), and indeed two of the five biggest cities in Africa are on the Nile River - both in Egypt (<-- connection created).  Next, you may know that Nigeria is one of the most populous countries in Africa (<-- connection created), and another one on the list is in Nigeria.  Another city on the list is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (<--connection), which may surprise you (<--surprise) since that country has had a lot of political upheaval and many people fled the country.  Finally, the last city is one of the fastest growing one in Africa, and it just passed cities you might expect to find on the list like Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Alexandria (<-- connection), all of which are very big, but not in the top five (<--surprise).
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Now, you’ve activated some knowledge that you already have and new learning is ready for connection.  You can connect Lagos to Nigeria and Cairo and Giza to the Nile River when you see them.  You can also connect Luanda to the background knowledge you now have that it is a newcomer to the list and growing fast.  All of those small features have a cumulative effect on your chances of storing this new learning in your long-term memory.

Making connections to what you already know has a big impact on likelyhood of remembering.

5 - "Gradual Release"

Finally, I can greatly increase your chances of remembering this new information by “gradually releasing” it to you rather than just telling it to you. Here’s how “gradually releasing” something you want people to learn works:

    i. I do, you watch.  For starters, I would have simply taught you the information on the list.  During this part of the learning, your only responsibility is to listen.  I might do some of the things mentioned above, repeat the list a few times, and so on.  I’m teaching, you’re listening.

    ii. I do, you help. Now I recreate the list, but I solicit your help.  “Does anyone remember any cities on the list?  Yes, Cairo is one of them.  Cairo is on the Nile River in Egypt.  Do you remember the other city that was on the Nile River?  No?  Let me remind you - it is Giza, also in Egypt.”

And so on.  I’m recreating the list a second time, but you’re helping me do it from your working memory where you can.

 iii. You do, I help -  Now we do it a third time, but more of the onus is on you.  You recreate the list, and I help you remember and fill in where you’re still forgetting.

    iv. You do, I watch - Finally, we should be at the point where, for the time being, you can create the list and show me that you have learned it.

As you can imagine, short as this little sequence is, it goes a long way toward helping you remember and is much more helpful than “here’s the list. Quiz tomorrow. Study.”

Information that is handed off GRADUALLY is much more likely to be remembered.

And voila.  Seven simple ways to dramatically increase the chances that someone will remember something that you’ve taught them.  From tying shoes to driving lessons to Newton’s Laws, these small adjustments in how new concepts and processes are passed along make any learning “stick” much more often.

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