Mnemonic devices or acronyms can be used in many aspects of education from explaining an acronym to the learners or also creating acronyms for easier retention later. If a student has a way to memorize the material and associate with something else, they have a much better chance of remembering it later. The brain memorizes by association and therefore, associating a topic with a sentence or specific words allows easier retention. Mnemonics allow learners to learn and remember more material than if they were to just be told the information. The learners also remember the information for longer periods of time because of the way they learned the information.
Application:In an intro course when I am covering resume, cover letter, and interviewing techniques, they are many acronyms that are used. For example, when interviewing we use the acronym STAR Method, which stands for Situation/Task Action Result. When answering an interview question, you should answer with the situation or task that was involved, the action you took, so what you did, and then the result of your action and how it resolved or ended. This helps students to think of interview answers to practice before their interview and also helps them to stay on track of the question while they are answering during an actual interview. Another acronym similar to STAR is Action Verb + Skill + Task = Result (AVSTR). This is used when creating sentences on a resume for their previous work experience. You start the sentence with an action verb followed by a transferrable skill and the task that you had and if there was a specific result that can be included. A lot of times there wasn’t necessarily a result, so that is optional. This allows students to break down what their skills are and how to prove those skills to an employer. After students get the hang of the process, they find it very useful to think about it this way.
Assessment: Entry and Exit Tickets (Barkley & Major, 2016, pp. 91-95)A fun way to assess the class knowledge of the acronyms would be to have an entry and exit ticket. Before class started, I would ask the students to fill out a notecard with what their current knowledge is on the acronyms STAR and AVSTR. At the end of the class, I would have them answer the question again and then turn both of them in. It would serve as their attendance and also show me what they gained from the lessons. The analysis shouldn’t be too high because I would just compare the before and after and the preparation as well as implementation would be low.