At SchoolOnline, we want to make sure that your children are maximising their learning, and thereby their outcomes, when they are learning and revising online.
Sticky Learning is vital for us – in a nutshell, it means that children actually remember, long term, what they are learning. We use two key strategies for this – Retrieval Practice and Micro Learning. Read on to find out more about each of these.
So what is Sticky Learning?
Did you know … humans naturally forget more than 70% of what they learned within 24 hours?
This is why Sticky Learning is fundamental to our approach, facilitating learning that stays in the long-term memory and can be used to succeed throughout your child’s education.
What is Sticky Learning?
Sticky Learning – or “stickiness” – is how the brain learns and retainsinformation. In order to create learning that ‘sticks’ (content that students remember after the lesson is over), the brain must be activated for long-term retention, using learning strategies based on cognitive and neurological science.
Retrieval Practice
Retrieval Practice is a critical part of Sticky Learning, and is at the heart of everything we do at SchoolOnline. As a strategy, students bring information to their mind that they have learnt, in a process of ‘recalling.’
The challenge and effort of recalling information learnt strengthens memory and helps to identify where there may be gaps in learning. For example, recalling a Maths technique to answer a question has a more powerful effect than looking up the answer in a textbook. The act of recalling the technique and using it to answer a question is what dramatically improves learning.
The more difficult a child finds the Retrieval Practice, the better it is for their long-term learning. Many educational scholars have highlighted how the key strength of Retrieval Practice is its impact on long term learning, rather than many other strategies like cramming and reading the textbook, which only improve short term memory.
Key techniques
Low stakes quizzes
We incorporate this into our English tutorials, with every video tutorial featuring a specifically tailored quiz to support memory retrieval.
Bitesize tutorials
SchoolOnline promotes learning little and often, through our bitesize tutorials, fostering successful and smarter learning practices.
Micro Learning
Micro Learning is another key strategy we employ at SchoolOnline to ensure Sticky Learning for our users. Micro Learning means little and often! It involves using short bursts of highly engaging and interactive information to learn in the most effective way for long term memory. These can include video tutorials, audio and micro quizzes.
To learn, our brains need spaced out repetition in order to create strong connections and neural pathways for retrieving information. Micro Learning helps children to create long term memory, through learning in short bursts over time.
SchoolOnline features
Bitesize video tutorials
Our video tutorials usually around 5 minutes, give children the key skills and information they need within an age-optimised learning time.
Mini unit courses
Our ‘My Courses’ section is effective in encouraging “little and often” and focuses Micro Learning, featuring 10 mini units you can build on incrementally.
Track your Progress
We have created our ‘My Lists’ functionality, to help children save any Maths questions they wish to revisit or need additional help on.
Flexible, focused learning
At SchoolOnline we have created a site that you can use anytime and anywhere, supporting flexible, focused learning that works for your children!