Tuesday April 18, 2006
Learn Twice As Much With Same Effort You may be familiar with the Universal Law of Gravitation. And in schools and other auditorium settings, you may have observed the "Second Law Of Gravitation":
Students will gravitate towards the back of the class room. The seats in front fill up last.
Perhaps students are afraid to be picked out by the teacher to answer questions. Or perhaps they are afraid to be seen as eager to learn.
However, at some point in college I discovered that actually picking those undesirable seats up in front was a good idea. I've stuck by it ever since. In presentations at work I always beeline to the seats up in the front. Why? I discovered that lectures actually seemed more interesting that way. Perhaps there were fewer distractions between me and the instructor. Perhaps being up close let me see and hear everything clearly, and perhaps occasional eye contact with the instructor kept me from pulling out alternative reading material (e.g. computer books) if I got bored.
It turns out that if you sit in the center front, you will actually retain more of the material. Research shows that if people are placed randomly and then presented with information, people in the front, and people in the center, can recall a lot more of the presented information than listeners to the sides and back. And we're not talking 10% more. We're talking twice as much.
| Instructor | ||
| 57% | 61% | 57% |
| 37% | 54% | 37% |
| 41% | 51% | 41% |
| 31% | 48% | 31% |
This has been called the "Attention Zone" by some, and the "Action Zone" by others. (Information retention is just one aspect we can measure; verbal interaction is another.) This has been studied in depth because it has implications for class room design and student seating assignments.
Taking a seat in the front is a simple tip you can use to start enjoying lectures more. And you'll probably learn more. It's not exactly one of my coding tips, but potentially much more useful.
(2006-04-18 23:21:45.0) Permalink Comments [3]
