{"id":4565,"date":"2019-05-06T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4565"},"modified":"2019-05-06T14:52:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T19:52:29","slug":"visual-verbal-welcome-to-dual-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/visual-verbal-welcome-to-dual-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual & Verbal: Welcome to “Dual Coding”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at LoveToTeach87<\/a>, Kate Jones has written a thoughtful and thorough exploration of Dual Coding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What is “dual coding”? In brief, when we take care to present information in two formats —\u00a0visual<\/strong>\u00a0and verbal <\/strong>— we are dual coding.<\/p>\n

Schools too often focus on verbal presentation of information. Dual coding theory reminds us to add visuals as well<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jones’s post begins with a helpful over view of recent work in the field: in particular, the Learning Scientists, and also Oliver Caviglioli.<\/p>\n

She then changes gears, and offers a variety of specific classroom for putting this concept into practice:<\/p>\n

timelines<\/p>\n

comics\/storyboards<\/p>\n

revised notes<\/p>\n

summary cards<\/p>\n

And so forth. Because her post includes so many splendid examples, I encourage you to check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Behind the What<\/em>, the Why<\/em><\/h2>\n

But, why exactly does dual coding help?<\/p>\n

The short answer is: lots of reasons. But for me, the core answer comes back — as it so often does — to working memory<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Working memory allows brains to hold, reorganize, and combine information. In other words: all academic learning requires working memory.<\/p>\n

And: we just don’t have very much. (Alas, there’s no artificial way<\/a> to increase it. Yet<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But, we do have a secret supply of extra working memory. More precisely, we have different WM stores for visual and auditory information<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If I present information only verbally, then students must hold all that information with that part of their WM.<\/p>\n

It’s like doing mental push-ups with one arm.<\/p>\n

But, if I provide information both verbally and visually, they get to use both parts of their WM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And, of course, two arm push-ups are much easier to do.<\/p>\n

In sum: dual coding helps students learn, because it divides WM load between verbal and visual capacities.<\/p>\n

A Brief Warning<\/h2>\n

This teaching advice sounds a bit like learning styles. It suggests that we’ve got distinct visual and verbal learning capacities.<\/p>\n

PLEASE do not confuse these two theories. Learning styles theory has no support — it just ain’t true<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We ALL use visual WM. We ALL use auditory WM. (Those of us who have sight and hearing.)<\/p>\n

There is no “style” here. This cognitive architecture supports learning for us all.<\/p>\n

And so, dual coding benefits practically everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By “dual coding” — that is, by presenting information both verbally and visually — we can reduce our students working memory load. And: we can help them learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,30],"class_list":["post-4565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-working-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4565"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4574,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions\/4574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}