University of Plymouth Associate Lecturer, studied BSc Psychology at the University of Southampton, Author/Course Writer for Learn Direct/Leap Academy, Corporate/School Public Speaker:

Gavin originally learnt advanced memory techniques during his time studying BSc Psychology at the University of Southampton and he has continued to develop memory protocols in the over 15 years since. Gavin has been able to accomplish many impressive memory feats using his memory methods such as memorising the location of every country in the world on a blank map, every capital city, every national flag, every county in England, every state in the USA, every King and Queen of England, all 118 elements of the Periodic Table including the groupings of the elements, all of the bones and muscles of the human anatomy, and much more.

Gavin can support students that are preparing for exams with workshops on memory/revision techniques and also where appropriate with workshops on wellbeing/stress management/resilience/confidence. Support can be provided to students in groups of up to 50 students at a time to ensure students can get adequate guidance throughout the workshops with smaller groups preferred. 

The revision workshop covers an array of revision techniques and concepts. There are interactive elements built in and tasks for students to undertake to get to grips with the techniques. The first part of the workshop focuses on where we store memories and why we forget. Then important variables that aid revision are explained such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, taking breaks (referencing the primacy and recency effect) and studying in an environment with no distractions. In the next stage of the workshop, students are taught about concepts such as chunking, building on prior knowledge and reviewing that maximises the spaced repetition concept (to counter the forgetting curve). Following this Rosenshine's principles for learning are highlighted along with Egdar Dale's Cone of Learning. This section of the workshop explains the importance of scaffolding difficult tasks and aiming for approximately an 80% success rate in any given task as that is considered an optimal level of "attainable challenge" for learning. Being as interactive as possible in the learning process including by teaching peers is mentioned in this section along with explanations on why undertaking quizzes that prioritise weak areas can be so effective for developing recall memory. 

The students are then given guidance on how to optimise the use of imagery in their learning and the methods employed by the world's greatest memorisers. Gavin has remembered all of the countries and capitals in the world using these techniques and after opening the floor for students to test him on this, he subsequently explains the process of how to do it. There is next a task whereby students are asked to create their own images for the numbers 0-8 and then asked to make a story with the images to remember a random 8 digit number. After this section the students are taught about the journey method and are then asked to make their own journey and story to memorise a list of 12 words. Following these interactive elements students are given support on note taking and how adding imagery and colour into note taking (such as with a visual mind map) can greatly improve the effectiveness of note taking.

The methods and concepts outlined in the workshop are then summarised (including making a study schedule, utilising spaced repetition, chunking, reviewing using quizzes, using scaffolds, using imagery/stories/journeys, mind maps and more) and students are given the opportunity to ask any other questions they have. Following the success of this workshop Gavin has since developed a Level 2 revision workshop to give students an opportunity to build on the skills they have learnt in the first workshop, apply the techniques further into their specific subjects and get additional expert support time.