By Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
A good online course which is facilitated by a good instructor will contain items that will help learners prioritize, organize, and identify key elements in the material to be learned. In other words, instead of having an inventory of a million little pieces of knowledge scattered randomly throughout one’s brain, the course design and the instructor will help develop ways of organizing knowledge. The cognitive file cabinets, or organizational schemes are called "chunks" by educational psychologists (Gobet, 2005).
According to F. Gobet (2005), there are several effective ways to utilize the notion of "chunking" in an online course. According to his findings, effective chunking will allow the individual learner to optimize learning and to develop effective learning strategies for the future. It will also allow the learner to effectively organize knowledge so that they align with the desired learning outcomes.
In short, chunking involves directing learner attention to important features, and it can be done in a number of ways. Instructors who know how to help students develop chunking techniques usually do the following:
- 1) teach from simple to complex;
- 2) move from the known to the unknown;
- 3) clearly identify elements to be learned;
- 4) focus on limited number of standard problems;
- 5) avoid distracters;
- 6) organize information in central filing systems or databases.
Chunking applies to course development and design as well. It can be extremely useful for the instructional designer to take a look at the content and the learning outcomes and to start to build a course by following a certain number of procedures that help learners (and instructors) develop cognitive shortcuts and (eventually) the "expert" eye.
- 1) segment curriculum into natural components;
- 2) perform a task analysis and follow successful models;
- 3) make sure that the course includes opportunities to provide feedback.
This concept profoundly influences the way in which one might approach learning, and awareness of how the mind makes meaning, how the mind organizes knowledge, and the relationship between the organization of knowledge and its retrieval.
How is chunking one of the mechanisms of learning? Chunking involves taking a large number of random pieces of knowledge or information and organizing them into categories and easily identified patterns so that the knowledge is manageable.
How does chunking reinforce the role of feedback in learning? An instructor or expert’s feedback guides the way that patterns and categories of knowledge are developed.
How does the order in which materials are presented facilitate chunking? This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of chunking. Materials must be presented in the way you’d like the information to cluster or chunk together. Presenting information out of sequence or randomly attached to inappropriate categories or classification schemes will lead to confusion.
The interesting thing about chunks and chunking is that the way a person chunks is what makes the difference between an expert and a novice. Chunks tend to be the cognitive short-cuts that experts use to be able to recognize key features of a problem using perceptual cues (the "professional eye") and to maximize efficiency in problem identification and solving.
A good teacher knows how to help students prioritize, organize, and identify key elements to the point that the students become adept at pattern recognition and thus can create their own schemata or "chunks."
Reference
Gobet, F. (2005) "Chunking models of expertise: implications for education." Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19: 183-204 (2005).
Download Dr. Nash's podcast at:
http://community.elearners.com/inside_elearning/attachment/6465.ashx
(3.02 MB)