Cheerios for the Brain
May I let you in on a secret? Small pieces of information go down easier than lumps of content so giant they require a plan of attack. Why is that, you ask?
Oh man, excellent question. I have a theory. Stay with me.
This morning I was making my lunch in the kitchen. My daughter watched from her perch on the counter by the sink, happily eating a bowl of Cheerios by herself. She’s two years and a bit old. Believe you me, we did not arrive at unassisted Cheerio-eating overnight. I have the stained t-shirts to prove that it has been what I believe you’d call “a journey.”
Not long ago, my wife and I were cutting every bit of our daughter’s food into tiny bites. When you’re small, everything else needs to be small too. Big pieces are too difficult to figure out. Whole broccoli cuttings landed on the carpet, but bite-sized florets landed in the tummy. (Since becoming a dad, I’m using the word “tummy” a lot. All you toddlers reading this know what I’m saying; sorry, grown-ups.)
So meals have entailed a learning curve. By now, my daughter has consumed her own weight in Cheerios many, many times over. I used to give her toast. But after throwing away whole loaves’ worth of cold toast with naught but a single toddler bite out of the corner, we’ve settled on Cheerios. Together. It was my decision also. (Repeats silently to self over and over.)
I think the same strategy applies to learning. Why do small chunks work when big chunks don’t? Maybe because small steps — Cheerios for the brain, if you will — don’t take a master plan to consume.
When I’m in the toddler phase of learning something new, I need small chunks too. I don’t need a textbook on internal combustion engines. I just want to know how to do one thing at a time — change a tire, change the oil, and so on. Once I get the hang of things, I’ll work up to scarier stuff like valve cover gaskets. Someday I’ll see how it all fits together, but I need little steps to get there. Small learning steps land in the tummy; whole textbooks land on the carpet.
Not convinced yet? There’s a multiplier. A bowlful of Cheerios is really more food than a piece of toast. Give your learners Cheerio-sized steps, and they’ll soon learn so much more than they would have from toast equivalents — chapter readings, hour-long lectures, etc.
This is why we at Pathwright make tools to build effective courses out of short, actionable steps grouped into learner-friendly chunks. We build our own courses this way too; the results have been remarkably positive.
If you’re not doing this already, try it with us! Make the bites small. Before you know it, your learners will be sitting on the counter eating bowlfuls of small steps all by themselves.
Here are a few practical tips for turning lots of information into manageable steps:
- Break long readings into sections of about 300 to 400 words.
- Keep videos to two to five minutes when possible.
- Sprinkle in many checkpoints, so your learners check their growth in little increments first before they have a bigger exam.
- Encourage your learners to spend ten minutes everyday reviewing work instead of sixty minutes once a week.
- Overall, try for lots of little steps and shorter lessons while avoiding giant lessons with a few long steps.
Thousands of teachers use Pathwright every day to design and teach courses to their team, class, or anyone in the world. If you’d like to design a course, we invite you to try out Pathwright for free. You’ve got nothing to lose!
