long-tail learning

06Jun07

The Economist this week highlighted research conducted in a school in the UK North East, showing that short, intensive bursts of learning, interspersed with complete rest or distraction, is a much more effective way of getting students to learn than the current hour-long continuous lesson.

Monkseaton Community High School near Newcastle, under the headship of Paul Kelley, conducted the experiment. Lessons were chunked into eight-minute segments followed by ten minutes of rest. The rest periods often involved games, such as Simon Says or Chinese Whispers, to ensure that the mind did not remain pre-occupied during the break.

This looks a lot like what sports people call “interval training”, where work or exercise is broken with periods of recovery. It also goes by the term “periodisation”. This fits into the pattern described by the statistical concept of “long tail”, or “fat tail”.

It seems that if you’re looking for progress in any endeavour at the moment, it pays to think long tails. We’ve been observing it here in sports, through our own training efforts, in Art de Vany‘s blog, and in the comments of Nassim Taleb; see particularly today’s last serving of our lunchtime interview from May, where Taleb makes the very same point (although perhaps more loosely in application) about the way children should learn. His argument is that we learn in a non-linear fashion, and that the way to tap into that is by intensive effort followed by lots of relaxation.

The Economist story on Monkseaton also highlights German research indicating that adolescents need more sleep, and that this requirement is a natural response to hormonal shifts rather than self-indulgent teen sloth or necessarily the result staying out too late.

Monkseaton is also doing pioneering work with the Open University, permitting pupils aged 16-18 to enter degree courses alongside their A and AS-level work. Young Applicants in Schools and Colleges Scheme is is part of the OU distance learning programme.

Donate and help me buy back my Fender ('About' tells you why)

1942 Responseslong-tail+learning2007-06-06+16%3A09%3A29knackeredhack to “long-tail learning”

Feed for this Entry

1 Tim Beadle on Jun 7th, 2007 said:

See also: Burst Working.
2 knackeredhack on Jun 7th, 2007 said:

Tim B, that’s a great article. Thanks for the pointer. And oh how it brings back memories of arguments I had about the value of instant messaging in the 1990s. One should not pretend that you can’t disappear into a vortex of non-productive activity when faced with an open-ended information source or communication tool. I have seen them used negatively in a work context. But managers need to know when to turn a Nelson’s eye to social time-wasting. My favourite example was watching a workgroup reciting Abba hits one afternoon across continents in IM. These people could not have been more productive as individuals, as a group, or even in terms of “face-time” and hours at the office. That was before Web 2.0 was a mere twinkle, let alone Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0, and even before Abba were cool again! Or are they now out again….?