Essentials of Working Memory: 3 Facts
Unread emails and Firehoses
One of the tasks that I start with at the beginning of the school year with my high school students is to have them clear out their school email accounts. At some point in the first few days of the new year I will ask them to open up their email accounts.
“Out of curiosity, who has the most unread emails?”
By this point, many of these students have had a school email account since middle school or earlier. Our district, like many districts, uses email to communicate with students and families; convey information via newsletters, updates, and notification; send notifications from educational platforms such as google classroom, microsoft classroom, schoology, canvas and blackboard; and post grades, set up conferences, and report schedule changes.
“I have 1,238.”
“2,200.”
“Over 5,000.”
It is at this point that I encourage students to delete every email in their inbox. I explain to them that if the more unread emails they have, the less likely they are to read their emails. And vice versa. It is the old adage of “drinking water out of a firehose.” By giving students too much information, we are severely limiting the information they receive.
In 1956, George Miller published his paper, Magical Number of 7, +/- 2 which became the standard for research into working memory and capacity limit. This was followed by Donald Broadbent’s Filter model in 1958 which expanded the idea of a mental capacity limit to include a limit on attention as well. Since that time, many researchers have tested and reconfirmed the hypothesis that there is a capacity limit for working memory, or the immediate ability to retain and process information to complete a task at hand.
In slightly different terms, it’s the amount of water you can actually drink out of a hose and not the entirety of the reservoir from which it draws; it’s the number of emails you respond to and not the endless supply of updates, reminders, and foreign princes in need of financial assistance you rarely look at.
In a world of nearly limitless information, we often overestimate exactly how much information our students can actually handle over the course of a school day, especially at the high school level where a student may have multiple teachers assigning multiple tasks each day. This is further compounded by other responsibilities including families, friends, sports, clubs, and jobs. It’s just a lot to remember on any given day.
From Twenty to Two
Recently, I had a student who had missed several days in a row while we were working on a research project in the classroom. He asked the question that most students will ask when they’ve been out of the classroom for an extended period of time: “What did I miss?”
Up to this point, there were four structured assignments that had already been completed in the classroom. Each of those structured assignments required multiple small tasks to complete. Outside of those assignments, there were a few other daily assignments and routine tasks that we had completed as well. All in all, there were probably fifteen to twenty small tasks that he had missed. I was about to open up the firehose.
But I knew that would be too much for him, so I wanted to break it down into its most simple ideas.
“Basically, we are working on a research project. There are a couple of different things that we’ve done up to this point, but really, all I need you to do is pick something you want to know more about, explain why you want to know about it and what you already know, and then research it and tell me what you’ve learned.” I’d taken my twenty tasks and gotten it down to a more manageable five.
“The first thing I want you to do is the brainstorming activity. After that, there is an assignment called initial thoughts. Once you’re done with that….”
I could see his eyes starting to glaze over and a slight look of panic.
“…once you're done with that let me know and I can explain the next thing.”
I realized he couldn't handle five. For him, at that moment, three was a firehose. And he still had five more periods to go.
Three Things To Take Away
There are a few basic strategies that can be used in the classroom to help alleviate some of the cognitive load constraints that many of our students face on a daily basis.
Conceptual Learning is chunking. Keep your focus on the main idea for the unit or lesson. For example, the goal of the research project was to choose a topic of interest, tell me why you are interested in and what you already know, and then learn more about it through research. Miller’s law lets me remember those five basic things but not the twenty tasks associated with the process
Lists are great! When a student has a list of items or tasks, the cognitive demand of remembering everything they have to do is greatly decreased. Setting up assignments or units in steps that are clearly marked is an easy way for students to stay focused on the task they need to do next.
Too much information is wasted information. We’ve all walked out of a staff meeting at one point in our careers and thought, “couldn’t that have been sent in an email?” Yes, but would have noticed it wedged in between the dozens of other emails you’ve received today.
When working with students, it’s necessary to understand capacity limits and how it impacts student learning. Instead of thinking about all the things that a student needs to know over the course of the unit, it’s better to focus on what the student needs to know right now. Conceptually, the primary takeaway is that trying to frontload everything all at once is like trying to add water to a bowl that is already full. It’s just going to spill out the top.
