How does Chunking Impact Content Development?

Chunking is a memory strategy where you "chunk" or group information together in a relevant way to make remembering easier. According to Kaveti, "chunking is a technique course designers use to break information and then reorder the learning modules into chunks that make sense (Kaveti, 2000-2014)."
 
When you break information down into smaller learning modules, learners are able to navigate effortlessly and they are more apt to remember more of the content while making fewer mistakes. "The reason the brain needs this assistance is because working memory, which is where we manipulate information, holds a limited amount of information at one time (Malamed, 2014)." Using chunking is helpful because a person's working memory has a limited capacity. "People can hold from five to nine units of information in working memory at one time, with the average number of memorable units being about 7 (Ormord, p.168)." 

In the example below (Figure 1.1), the learner is expected to learn the numbers, 1, 9, 7, and 8. Instead of trying to remember the numbers individually, we chunk the numbers together to make 1978. Since the numbers are chunked together as a year and  this assists the learner in remembering the information effortlessly.

Figure1.1

 

 

Chunking helps so that the learner is not overloaded with so much content that the learner is no longer retaining the content. Learners are more eager to engage in content if it is chunked together and more open to learning the content. "Chunking information is particularly important for online learning (Malamed, 2014)." When there is a large amount of information learners become overwhelmed and uninterested, they are also less likely to retain the information.

Chunking also increases the probability that you can quickly find information if the content is chunked together. When chunking, organize your information into small paragraphs of content. "When information is given in small chunks, it enhances the working memory of the learners (Kaveti, 2000-2014)."

Figure 1.2

In the example above (Figure 1.2), EXAMPLE 1 shows several shapes scattered all inside of the rectangle which makes it is difficult to determine what all the shapes in the box are and how many of each shape there is. EXAMPLE 1 is clearly confusing which makes it very hard to remember how many of each shape there is. In EXAMPLE 2, we used the chunking technique, where we grouped the shapes that are alike together and you can clearly see what shapes are there and how many there is of each shape.

People's lives are so busy that chunking is a beneficial method of retaining information that it needed. If we exceed our working memory, as the saying goes, if you do not use it...you will lose it. "This is a big challenge for a course designer, it means that if you are explaining something complex and the learner must hold several factors in mind to understand it, you will need to chunk information into bite-sized pieces (Malamed, 2014)."

References

 

 

Kaveti, Vandana. Importance of Content Chunking for Effective eLearning Development (2000-2014). CommLab India. Retrieved June 23, 2014 from http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/importance-content-chunking

Malamed, Connie. Chunking Information for Instructional Design 2014. Retrieved June 23, 2014 from http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/chunking-information/.

 
Ormrod, Jeanne Ellis (2012). Human Learning (sixth ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. 
 
Popova, Maria. The Science of "Chunking," Working Memory, and How Pattern Recognition Fuels Creativity. Retrieved June 23, 2014 from http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/04/the-ravenous-brain-daniel-bor/.