Designing for Memory

When building something, it's helpful to know your constraints before you get started. For example, if a survey of your land finds that the lot lines aren't where you thought they were, you may need to change the location of the house you want to build. Finding this constraint out after you build will cause tremendous problems! When building instruction, we may think the biggest constraints are not having enough resources, such as time or skills. But the constraint that we need to pay the most attention to is memory. The parts of our memory that are used during learning are easily overwhelmed. An overwhelmed memory has a difficult, if not impossible, time learning.So, rather than ignore this powerful constraint and deal with problematic outcomes, we should understand it and design for memory constraints. In this webcast, the speaker will discuss: - how and why memory is a constraint on learning - why these constraints apply more in some circumstances than others - what these constraints mean for designing instruction - how to design with memory constraints in mind.