It’s December, and many of us will be indulging in the annual tradition of arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas film. As a respected Research School, we won’t indulge in such controversial topics, but whenever we think about Die Hard, it reminds us of the time we had to retire our Die Hard quiz.
It’s been a regular feature of our presentations on memory. A fun quiz that was designed to emphasise an important point about using existing knowledge to connect to new knowledge. Eventually it became a non-example.
Using schemas
When introducing new concepts, it is helpful for us to connect to our pupils’ existing schemas. As the EEF write, “Schemas (sometimes referred to as mental models, scripts, or frames) are structures that organise knowledge in the mind. When learning, the mind connects new information with pre-existing knowledge, skills, and concepts thereby developing existing schemas.”
We connect new information to existing schemas all the time. For example, comparing a virus to an invading army, or comparing the earth’s shape to an egg, a balloon, or an orange. These are all helpful because they tap into an idea that is familiar.
The quiz
The Die Hard quiz is designed to build on this idea, by referencing the way that marketing concepts often tap into our existing knowledge to introduce a new movie. For example, the film Anna and the Apocalypse was described as ‘Shaun of the Dead meets La La Land’ and we can quickly get a sense of what this movie is like.
Here is the aforementioned quiz that aims to build on this idea. In the late ’80s and ’90s, we had a number of ‘Die Hard on a…’ films, which played on our appetite for John McLane-esque antics in other locations.
Guess the film described:
Die Hard on a bus. Die Hard on a plane. Die Hard on a boat.
Answers at the end of the blog.
Dying hard
After the quiz (and a supplementary question about Made in Chelsea) we look more closely at ways we can use analogy and concrete examples to tap into existing knowledge.
The problem has been that the quiz element only really works if participants have seen Die Hard. And even if they have, they need knowledge of late 20th Century action films. Otherwise there are blank faces, and awkward silence only broken by someone shouting ‘Titanic?’.
Which means that our quiz, which was designed to emphasise how effective it is to connect new knowledge to existing knowledge, doesn’t actually do that. And in a session where we highlight the need for apposite examples and analogies, that’s a problem.
For quite a while, we laboured this quiz, styling it out by saying it proves how important it is to check for prior knowledge etc. Now we share more concrete examples from education such as homeostasis and electrical circuits. It’s possibly not as much fun, but if we want fun, we can just catch up on all the action movies we have missed.
Answers
Die Hard on a bus. Speed. Die Hard on a plane. Passenger 57; Executive Decision; Air Force One. Die Hard on a boat. Under Siege; Speed 2: Cruise Control.
