Creating Long Term Memory
I teach online classes in the evening for students wanting to become a Certified Professional Coder. There is alot of information given to students in a short period of time each term so it is very important that the students create some form of retaining this information.
One thing that I have done in the past and seems to work really well is to have students make flash cards. Each term this can be done, for Medical Terminology, Anatomy and Physiology and so on. Then when the students are ready to sit for their examination they can utilize their flashcards. Here students are seeing the same information more than once.
Using flash cards when providing a lot of information can be helpful, but can also be overwhelming to the student. I suggest after making the cards, to divide them up into groups of 10 cards. Work on these 10 cards to ensure you know the information, than move on to the next 10 cards. When 5 groups of 10 have been done, combine them all and see how much information has been retained.
Remove the cards that are answered correctly and continue to work on the remaining cards, again in groups of 10.
For myself, if I am having trouble remembering a term or concept, I will draw a picture on the card to provide a visual reminder too. For example with one of the B vitamins (and there are over 10 of them), a deficiency causes a condition called hot feet- I drew feet on this card to help me remember which one it was.
Grouping the cards in this way is a great strategy. This makes it possible for the student to be successful in small steps. Thanks, Ann!
This is a great idea. I agree with you that sometimes a stack of flash cards can be overwhelming to look through. I like the idea of dividing them up into 10's to make it easier. Drawing a picture is a great visual reminder for the learner too.
Kelly
Chunking them into 10's as a way to make it manageable, I agree.
I teach a lot of subjects but I love Medical Terminology and A&P the most. What I usually do with my class is I tell them my techniques that I used before in remembering the definitions of terminologies. Flash cards and rewriting, as a lot of us have already mentioned work wonders, but I usually make up acronyms to help me out too, for example "fav" as in favorite to stand for front, anterior and ventral, I also give them hints like polygamous for poly (many) and pyromaniac for pyro (fire)and use characters that they know to identify certain terms.
Tessie , it is smart to build on what's familiar and use that with terminology.
Michele Deck
I love telling relevant stories about my private practice experiance. Explaining how I really talk to patients about medical issues helps to create a connection for my students to remember.
I believe using your own personal experiences and telling students stories when it is relevant to the subject helps to create long term memory.
Mary, I agree that real stories can serve as effective teaching tools.
Michele Deck
