What kind of "connection" you have in mind - technical or social?

Jeannette Schmid: While technical and social connections do play a part in learning, my focus is on mental connections. Many new concepts, for example matching information presentation to learning style or blending social and education environments by including social media, attempt to increase learning motivation and reduce learning barriers. Getting the learners’ attention and helping them to understand content is an important step, but it is only a precondition to learning.

Learning means committing information to memory. This information should be correct, and the learner should be able to retrieve it at the appropriate moment. Memory thrives on mental connections between elements of knowledge. The more connections a learner has to a specific piece of information and the stronger those connections are, the more likely it is that that piece of information can be retrieved.

What impact does this "connection" have on classwork or on learning and on instructional forms in general?

Jeannette Schmid: Connections are strengthened by repetition, and the educator’s challenge is to induce repetition without boring the learners. This can be achieved by working with diverse examples and by engaging learners in multiple activities: listening, discussion, evaluating, testing, reading, etc. This means that less content can be taught in a given amount of time, which has several consequences. The educator has to focus on the essentials and on structure.

The learners must be given the means for self-directed learning, but they must not be left to their own devices.  Clear standards and assignments, evaluative feedback, and transparency regarding the educational roadmap are necessary.  They increase intrinsic motivation and provide greater insight into individual learning processes

Can you give us a concrete example of your hypothesis?

Jeannette Schmid: I can give an example of what teaching could be like when you focus on connections. When teaching jet propulsion, you needn’t stick to rockets and planes for illustration. You could ask the learners to think back to the last serving of calamari they ate and to recall the smell and the taste. Then you could show a film of a squid moving through water, indicating that they had eaten a living jet-propulsion engine. You could also challenge sci-fi fans about how they think a space shuttle would move through the atmosphere of a foreign planet.

Here you could have the learners estimate the impact of different hypothetical atmospheres with a short test: You could bring a jet-propulsion bathtub toy to class and challenge the learners to suggest technical improvements to increase speed or maneuverability and have them discuss the different designs they come up with. Using the original toy, you could have them explain to a hypothetical sister or brother how jet propulsion works in the simplest possible language, but without flaws regarding the principle. All of these activities establish and strengthen multiple connections.