Components of effective knowledge representation in active recall systems
(from P.A.Wozniak, Economics of Learning)
All the principles of effective knowledge representation discussed in the following section come from years of experience in developing knowledge systems for my own use, as well as from a continuing opportunity to study the relationship between item difficulty and knowledge representation in knowledge systems developed by users of SuperMemo, many of whom seek professional advice before embarking on major knowledge system development, or equally often are eager to share their own experience and problems encountered while applying repetition spacing in all imaginable learning domains.
The following are the five thematic groups related to knowledge representation in self-instruction systems based on active recall:
- the sequence in which particular items are stored in the knowledge system as a element of effective build-up of intricate knowledge structures in the student’s brain
- minimization of the synaptic pattern complexity by application of principles such as minimum information principle, narrowing by example, metaphoric approach, vivid approach, graphic approach, deletion, graphic deletion, mnemonic techniques, enumeration techniques, interference elimination, etc.
- redundancy in establishing synaptic patterns as a means of minimizing the transitive damage of forgetting to associative knowledge structures (using passive and active approach, flexible repetition, reasoning clues, derivation steps, etc.)
- wording optimization as a means of affecting error rates, stimulation specificity, response time, concentration, etc.
- knowledge independent functionality (sourcing, subdomain classification, update markers, etc.)
In the five following sections I will address all the above thematic groups individually using examples from the aforementioned knowledge system on microeconomics.