Overview of the brain and learning and information processing theory resources -  Week 2 blog post

To be an effective instructional designer, you must understand how the adult brain works and what the informational processing theory entails.

The brain rules blog (http://brainrules.blogspot.com/) provides a lot of great information on the human brain, and how information stores in both short term and long term memory. In John Medina’s (author of Brain Rules) 10/24/2014 blog post for How does memory work? He explained that unlike a computer that has a hard-drive, the brain has various memory systems. Instructional designers need to understand what these different systems are, and how they affect the content they are designing.

The information processing theory piggybacks off of understanding how the brain works. In a March 2014 blog post on Information Processing Theory (http://elearningindustry.com/information-processing-theory), the author Christopher Pappas provided a summary of the information processing theory, and it’s application to the learning process. This blog site points out the three main functions of information process, in addition to the three principles of the information processing theory, that will help instructional designers understand the logic and how to design content that will be easily digested and retained by learners.