This video states that our brains can only hold 4 to 5 new things in working memory at any one time. If so, should notes or teaching material contain only 4 or 5 new ideas too?
1 Answer
No, it is possible to contain a lot of ideas in a lecture. Don't confuse the issue of simultaneity with what can occur over time. Our brains are good at juggling a few distinct ideas at once, but also good at processing ideas over time.
A day's lecture can contain a lot of ideas provided that it isn't necessary to overload the student with too much at once. One technique for doing that is to introduce the ideas serially and have the explanations have enough time to settle in the student's mind before moving to the next idea and, then, combining them.
And, if the student takes notes properly, the ideas will be spread out in both time (listening/writing time) and space (the flow of the text written down).
But the wise instructor who is pushing out a lot of ideas will also stop occasionally to ask for questions (or ask questions themselves) to let students assimilate what they need to know.
In effect, if you have ten things to learn and you first learn two or three of them, you can assimilate them into "one thing", and thus take up the next idea. It is a hierarchical process of simpler ideas combining into more complex ones that can be applied without necessarily always referring back to the simpler parts. Our brains are good at that.
An additional technique for the student who wants to learn something deeply is to summarize their notes from a lecture soon after it ends. Try to extract the two or three most important ideas. One useful technique for this is to use index cards that can later be carried and used for review when you have a few moments to spare.
