why flash? vocab words mnemonics story telling teaching things people will remember: mnemonics harry...
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Teaching Things People Will Remember: Mnemonics
Harry WitchelBrighton and Sussex Medical School
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Outline
• Learning with Flash movies Strengths Weaknesses
• Learning New Vocabulary Words Drip feed new words to avoid overload
• Mnemonics Principles for “one-shot” learning
• Story Telling and Narratives
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Flash and Teaching
Flash provides memorable and interesting experiences that go beyond classroom teaching or text books.
Novelty • motivation for paying attention• Possibly more memorable
Explaining movements Explaining Sounds Interactivity
• Much more engaging, eg quizzes
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Teaching with Flash
The end-user will NOT memorise your movie verbatim
The end-user will often forget your image as soon as it disappears from the screen.
Instead, the end-user will make “meaning” from what you show them.
The end-user will then remember this meaning as the “gist” of your message.
• E.g. “it was fun movie about coagulation factor enzymes, with lots of balls bouncing off one another and changing colours”
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Teaching with Flash
Flash gives the end-user many methods and motivations for learning information
If you associate the “flashy bits” of your Flash movie with pauses or transitions, all the user will remember is that your movie was “cool”
They will not remember the information you were trying to teach them
You need to closely associate the surprising or funny bits of your movie that they are going to remember with the information you are trying to convey
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Learning New Vocabulary
New vocabulary words should be presented one at a time, and they should be defined immediately and briefly.
A new vocabulary word should be treated like a Region of Interest (RoI) such that the end-user’s eye focuses on it.
Complicated charts with many vocabulary words have to be broken down, simplified, or re-emphasized one word at a time.
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Vocabulary Words as Regions of Interest
From a student project in 2012 by Cem Dennis-Stubbs
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Complex Pathway of Glycolysis:Only One Step is Taught, Using an RoI
From a student project in 2011 by Louise Ting and Alex Gibbons
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Mnemonics
There are (broadly speaking) four ways to get people to remember a piece of information:
Repetition • most reliable
Associate with strong emotions • Very unreliable and unpredictable• Eg “where were you when World Trade Center was
attacked?” Create a previous need for that information
• I.e. when a person fails at a task repeatedly, and then you give them information that will allow them to succeed
Mnemonics
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Mnemonics
Definition: Mental techniques for aiding the memorization of specific information
Eg people memorizing the order of a deck of cards.• In 2002 a British man (Dominic O’Brien) set a world record
by memorizing a random sequence of 2808 playing cards (54 packs) after looking at each card only once
• Not necessarily the most useful skill unless you are gambling in Las Vegas
Usually mnemonics is hard workThe principles of mnemonics can be used to make
memorizing some pieces of information much easier
E.g. a typical initial treatment to myocardial infarction is MONA: morphine, oxygen, nitrates and aspirin
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Principles of Mnemonics
Grouping information (eg sets of 3)Associating with the familiarPlacesPeople and narrativesTaboo, secrets, death, sexHumourVivid sensations
Not just sight Include sounds, feelings, smells, etc
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Information Structuring
A single word or acronym
Groups of 3 or 4 work best
Avoid groupings of more than 7 Hard to get into short term memory Unless you have a mnemonic for your mnemonic
• E.g. a rhyme or an acronymOn Old Olympus’s Towering TopA Finn And German Viewed Some HopsMnemonic for Cranial Nerves: Olfactory Optic Oculomotor
Trochlear Trigeminal Abducens Facial Auditory Glosspharyngeal Vagus SpinalAccessory Hypoglossal
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Mnemonics List
HumourSexDeathViolenceMovementColoursSoundsSmellsFeelings
FacesPlacesTastesStrong emotionsFamily membersAnimalsMoneyRhymingEtc.
Add any of these to an image or memory to make it more vivid and easier to remember.
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Further info on Mnemonics
Books by Tony Buzan Dominic O’Brien
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Mnemonics in Flash
“All little balls look the same”Most colour changes are hard to remember
People cannot remember what it used to be Patterns can have more meaning
• Eg solid to barber pole stripey
Shape changes can be more powerful Taking a bite out of a shape (or completing a shape
with a bite out of it) is memorable• Because what it used to be is related to and meaningful in
context of what it now is
Changes in scale are very powerful
Use them to teach the most important info
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Characters and anthropomorphising
We remember people and storiesYou can give molecules human-like
characteristics Especially “wanting”, but also strong (or
humorous) emotions
Narrative structures are memorableThere are three elements to a story:
A want or need A process to satisfy the want The result of the process
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Anthropomorphising an Enzyme
The enzyme PFK-1 is a happy character about to phosphorylate Fructose-6-Phosphate (cheerleader)From a student project in 2011 by Louise Ting and Alex Gibbons
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All patient cases ARE narratives
The patient needs to get better.You (the doctor) want to find a diagnosis or
a treatment.
Narrative structures A want or need
• to heal the disease A process to satisfy the want
• To successfully diagnose, OR to administer treatment
The result of the process • Recovery OR death (either one makes a good story)
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Places are memorable
Especially the detailsCould be a cityCould be their kitchen
It helps if the place is vividly recalledA place the person knows wellA place the person imagines vividly