Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina Page B
Authors: John Medina
Tags: Self-Help
Ads: Link
because they had to communicate at such elementary levels, were truly fed up with teaching. They seemed to forget that the information was brand new to us, and that we needed the time to digest it, which meant a need for consistent breaks. How true indeed that expertise doesn’t guarantee good teaching!
Such needs are not the case just in classrooms. I have observed similar mistakes in sermons, boardrooms, sales pitches, media stories—anywhere information from an expert needs to be transferred to a novice.
ideas
The 10-minute rule provides a way out of these problems. Here’s the model I developed for giving a lecture, for which I was named the Hoechst Marion Rousell Teacher of the Year.
Lecture design: 10-minute segments
I decided that every lecture I’d ever give would come in discrete modules. Since the 10-minute rule had been known for many years, I decided the modules would last only 10 minutes. Each segment would cover a single core concept—always large, always general, always filled with “gist,” and always explainable in one minute . Each class was 50 minutes, so I could easily burn through five large concepts in a single period. I would use the other 9 minutes in the segment to provide a detailed description of that single general concept. The trick was to ensure that each detail could be easily traced back to the general concept with minimal intellectual effort. I regularly took time out from content to explain the relationship between the detail and the core concept in clear and explicit terms. It was like allowing the geese to rest between stuffings.
Then came the hardest part: After 10 minutes had elapsed, I had to be finished with the core concept. Why did I construct it that way? Three reasons:
1) Given the tendency of an audience to check out 20 percent of the way into a presentation, I knew I initially had only about 600 seconds to earn the right to be heard—or the next hour would be useless. I needed to do something after the 601 st second to “buy” another 10 minutes.
2) The brain processes meaning before detail. Providing the gist, the core concept, first was like giving a thirsty person a tall glass of water. And the brain likes hierarchy. Starting with general concepts naturally leads to explaining information in a hierarchical fashion. You have to do the general idea first . And then you will see that 40 percent improvement in understanding.
3) It’s key that the instructor explains the lecture plan at the beginning of the class, with liberal repetitions of “where we are” sprinkled throughout the hour. This prevents the audience from trying to multitask.
If the instructor presents a concept without telling the audience where that concept fits into the rest of the presentation, the audience is forced to simultaneously listen to the instructor and attempt to divine where it fits into the rest of what the instructor is saying.
This is the pedagogical equivalent of trying to drive while talking on a cell phone. Because it is impossible to pay attention to ANY two things at once, this will cause a series of millisecond delays throughout the presentation. The linkages must be clearly and repetitively explained.
Bait the hook
After 9 minutes and 59 seconds, the audience’s attention is getting ready to plummet to near zero. If something isn’t done quickly, the students will end up in successively losing bouts of an effort to stay with me. What do they need? Not more information of the same type. That would be like geese choking on the food with no real chance to digest. They also don’t need some completely irrelevant cue that breaks them from their train of thought, making the information stream seem disjointed, unorganized, and patronizing. They need something so compelling that they blast through the 10-minute barrier and move on to new ground—something that triggers an orienting response toward the speaker and captures executive functions, allowing efficient
Such needs are not the case just in classrooms. I have observed similar mistakes in sermons, boardrooms, sales pitches, media stories—anywhere information from an expert needs to be transferred to a novice.
ideas
The 10-minute rule provides a way out of these problems. Here’s the model I developed for giving a lecture, for which I was named the Hoechst Marion Rousell Teacher of the Year.
Lecture design: 10-minute segments
I decided that every lecture I’d ever give would come in discrete modules. Since the 10-minute rule had been known for many years, I decided the modules would last only 10 minutes. Each segment would cover a single core concept—always large, always general, always filled with “gist,” and always explainable in one minute . Each class was 50 minutes, so I could easily burn through five large concepts in a single period. I would use the other 9 minutes in the segment to provide a detailed description of that single general concept. The trick was to ensure that each detail could be easily traced back to the general concept with minimal intellectual effort. I regularly took time out from content to explain the relationship between the detail and the core concept in clear and explicit terms. It was like allowing the geese to rest between stuffings.
Then came the hardest part: After 10 minutes had elapsed, I had to be finished with the core concept. Why did I construct it that way? Three reasons:
1) Given the tendency of an audience to check out 20 percent of the way into a presentation, I knew I initially had only about 600 seconds to earn the right to be heard—or the next hour would be useless. I needed to do something after the 601 st second to “buy” another 10 minutes.
2) The brain processes meaning before detail. Providing the gist, the core concept, first was like giving a thirsty person a tall glass of water. And the brain likes hierarchy. Starting with general concepts naturally leads to explaining information in a hierarchical fashion. You have to do the general idea first . And then you will see that 40 percent improvement in understanding.
3) It’s key that the instructor explains the lecture plan at the beginning of the class, with liberal repetitions of “where we are” sprinkled throughout the hour. This prevents the audience from trying to multitask.
If the instructor presents a concept without telling the audience where that concept fits into the rest of the presentation, the audience is forced to simultaneously listen to the instructor and attempt to divine where it fits into the rest of what the instructor is saying.
This is the pedagogical equivalent of trying to drive while talking on a cell phone. Because it is impossible to pay attention to ANY two things at once, this will cause a series of millisecond delays throughout the presentation. The linkages must be clearly and repetitively explained.
Bait the hook
After 9 minutes and 59 seconds, the audience’s attention is getting ready to plummet to near zero. If something isn’t done quickly, the students will end up in successively losing bouts of an effort to stay with me. What do they need? Not more information of the same type. That would be like geese choking on the food with no real chance to digest. They also don’t need some completely irrelevant cue that breaks them from their train of thought, making the information stream seem disjointed, unorganized, and patronizing. They need something so compelling that they blast through the 10-minute barrier and move on to new ground—something that triggers an orienting response toward the speaker and captures executive functions, allowing efficient
Similar Books
