As promised, here is PART TWO:

“Memory is not talked about much in education, but it is critically important,” Wieman said, and the limited discussion that does occur focuses primarily on long-term memory while short-term working memory is ignored.

He compared the latter to a personal computer with limited RAM. “The more it is called upon to do, to remember, the harder it is to process. The average human brain [working memory] has a limit of five to six new items, it can’t handle anything more.”

A new item is anything that is not in the learner’s long-term memory, he continued. “Anything you can do to reduce unnecessary demands on working memory will improve learning.”

Among them is elimination of unnecessary jargon.

The thought that immediately jumped into my head is how fond Educationists are of creating new jargon.

I am teaching a course this summer on Digital Game Based Learning. I’m excited about because I love designing courses, and I haven’t done one since the winter term of 2010. The last time I taught an Education course was in 2008 – it was actually this course.

I have always struggled with the terminology (a.k.a. jargon) in Education – it seems that the ordinary words and plain language are passe. In Education, it seems, if you can coin a new term, that’s almost as good as actually doing something that’s new. In a few cases, it turns out to be better – especially if you can convince people to use your term in favour of the plain language that ‘ordinary’ people might understand.

Here’s an example: The last time I taught, I gave assignments. That’s a term that’s pretty descriptive, and one that’s been used long enough that pretty much everyone knows what you mean when you say it. This time, I’m supposed to call them learning tasks. Assignments, I’m told are not descriptive enough, or doesn’t capture the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve, or something.

How, I ask, does this improve things? I’m sure that many Educators would be at least slightly insulted that I might refer to this as jargon, but, to anyone outside the discipline, it is, because that’s not the term normally used.

Does it actually improve learning? Doubtful. So, then, why?

To be fair, at least part of the time, these things are driven by a sincere desire to create better descriptions of things. Hover, once a term is accepted and understood to mean something, why change it? Doing so adds to the cognitive load of the learners.

“Software Engineering” is NOT about the engineering of software, but it is the commonly accepted term, so what would I gain by calling it something else?

Looking at things a little cynically, I would suggest that the other part of the time (and we can argue of proportions if you like) it is done:

• to make something old sound new;
• to be more politically correct;
• to give the appearance of progress where there is none in fact;
• to justify parts of a discipline that could probably benefit from less flowery language and more practical effort.

There.
I said it.

I think the field of Education is hugely important. Unfortunately it suffers from the same weaknesses as most other disciplines, namely the application of Sturgeon’s Law, which states that “90% of everything is crap.” This is true of the academic discipline of Education.

I think we should worry less about what kind of “21-Century Leaning” label we can attach to something, and more about what we are doing and how it will make things better.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who ‘ligate’ arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94)

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A man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

—Herman Melville (1819-91)

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The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

—George Orwell

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The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

~Hippocrates

AAAS – AAAS News Release – “Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman: Effective Teaching Should Create Students Who Think Like Scientists”.

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