It takes so long to learn some operations. For example Non-Breaking spaces and hyphens in documents are difficult to remember even after 60 hours of MS-Word Basic practice, most cannot use it when asked to demonstrate it. Probably because they are taught without intensity and forgotten as soon as they have been attempted.
I am thinking of how to focus mental energy on any task to speed learning. Since most people can only handle 5 to 7 items in memory at a time, the purpose of practice is to reduce the number of short term memory chunks required by any given task. At first Non-Breaking Spaces require all your attention, eventually, using them will be automatic.
"Practice makes it perfect", so perfect would be reducing a new task from requiring your undivided attention to a single step. As a teacher, that would be a test for competency. Can the student do the task using ONE CHUNK of short term memory?
I submit that measuring the number of chunks the student uses to perform a task could be done by testing the student's mind map of the schema the task requires. Does the student instantly recognize various parts of the schema from vocabulary, actions, concepts or need coaching to identify them. Until every part of a schema is instantly recognized more practice is required.
Back to my Non-Breaking space and hyphen example I will design activities that increase the number of repetitions. There are many steps to using this simple tool: 1. Identify the case in a text. 2. Remember the need for Non-Breaking Space 3, Remember the keyboard shortcut or mouse insert symbol buttons. 4. Apply the technique correctly. 5. Confirm the work has been done correctly.
Once you have achieved mastery of the technique, how many steps are required? One. That is the only test.
Maybe rote and repetition were not such bad methods after all.
Here is a tool to implement spaced repetition https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/ Install this tool to use these decks Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards
Steve
A tool for timed repetition
Simulation of SRS vs. Traditional Review - YouTube
For those interested in using a SRS for review, I highly recommend using Anki:
http://ankisrs.net/
Comment by Satvik Beri, Math dude Suggest Bio
there's a world of difference between being able to solve a problem in 30 seconds and solving it instantly-they think that as soon as they have a basic, conscious understanding, that's enough.
The reason this is so important is because humans have a finite amount of short-term/working memory. You've probably heard that most people can only remember 5-9 digits at a time.
The same concept applies to things like Math. If a vector space occupies 8 units of memory, then you have no room to understand anything else. But if it occupies 1 unit, you have plenty of room to build from. And how do you reduce the amount of memory something takes up? By practice. This part of the learning process is called chunking[1].
So the reason why math geniuses learn so quickly is because they've studied the basic material so thoroughly that it's become intuitive to them. The average high school graduate will have to use up several units of memory to expand an expression like, whereas a more advanced one will be able to solve that with 1 or 0 units of memory. That makes it easier to learn advanced concepts that build upon the simpler ones.
[0]: Fourier series[1]: Chunking (psychology)Source: (2) Mathematics: How do math geniuses understand extremely hard math concepts so quickly? - Quora
