The Need for Sleep to Process Information in a Simulation-Centric Class

Should we add "bed," alongside whiteboard and lab, in our list of great educational tools?

I have found with any experiential and complex-systems based learning program (such as around a Big Skill like project management), it is paramount to have the participants first get an exposure to the task, and then "sleep on it" before continuing. When students were not able to sleep on it, they were anxious and dissatisfied and learned less. In contrast, when the students did break up learning with sleep, their subconscious processed and assimilated the information, and they returned to the program the next morning without the trepidation they had shown the night before and in the control groups.

Said simply, the same program that took the same number of hours, if broken up with a good night's sleep, resulted in significantly better student enjoyment and, more importantly, organization and retention of the material.

Possible problems of ignoring the role of sleep

The existance of this simple rule can hurt simulation deployments in at least three different ways. First, this can confound a training group's insistence on a "one-day" or "half-day" program, especially where students are unreliable in doing any prework (universities, thankfully, don't have this problem). This also can hurt some attempts to measure the effectiveness of simulations, as researchers often try to control all variables and shoe-horn in an entire simulation experience in a single (often long) session. Finally, this can hurt the widespread adoption of a simulation if an evaluator tries to skim a simulation in a half-hour, and then "doesn't get it" so doesn't support it.

Chunking well

As with a fine wine, authentic learning has to breathe a bit. A simple chunking process, where students experience at least 30 minutes to an hour of the interface in its entirety and at least some of the mechanics, even ideally getting a little stuck (which can be done as homework if the students are responsible and the deployers of the class have credibility), sleep on it, and then dive in to harder levels can be the difference between success and failure, between meaningful experience and frustration and confusion.