How Do We Ensure That Students Remember What We Teach Them? (Part 3 of 3)

Minimizing the Forgetting Curve and Improving Learner Retention (2)

Forgetting, or more correctly minimising the rate at which we forget, is a function of several facets of learning. To maximise retention your design should:

• Ensure the student is engaged by the subject matter.
• Know what you want the student to remember.
• Design in-built course motivation.
• Create cohesive, linked content.
• Design to use a range of content delivery styles.
• Provide pre-course preparatory content.
• Enable discovery learning.
• Provide effective knowledge checks.
• Provide post-course performance support content.

The first points were covered in my previous blog, How Do We Ensure That Students Remember What We Teach Them? (Part 2 of 3).   

Pre-Learning Preparation

The Ebbinghaus approach to memory retention analysis was based on new and random information, which enabled him to abstract the tests from as much pre-learned information as possible. Had he used three letter sets that were all common words, such as CAT or DOG rather than GIW or QOH (he didn’t publish the exact letter sets that he used), he would have found it far easier to memorise the sets. This is because the memory will fix on familiar patterns or create picture mnemonics to aid memory. 

In most circumstances, you need to employ the reverse methodology, by incorporating pre-learning preparatory content for students, both in classroom or digital learning environments. You have to determine what a student needs know to get the most benefit from the upcoming training. Do not fall into the trap of just sending out the complete course prior to the training event. This can produce two unhelpful results; the student doesn’t bother to do the prerequisite learning because they know it will be covered in the training, or the student will go through the course and be bored by the repetition.

I would recommend that you tell the students that there will be a review of the pre-course content and then make sure that it is reviewed. This may be a discussion or a set of review questions. There will always be some students who do not complete the preparation (for legitimate or other reasons) but a kick-off review will ensure that this group will prepare thoroughly for your training in future.

 

Enable Personal Discovery

Discovery learning is an effective way to help students to retain what they learn through, perhaps because of the enhanced strength of episodic memories as discussed in A Theoretical Foundation for Discovery Learning (Svinicki, 1998); of course you have to make sure that they discover what you want them to learn as part of this. The search for a solution creates an enriched experience for the learner and will improve the level of retention by increasing the level of engagement and creating memory links around the topic.  In a moderated environment, such as a classroom or virtual learning (vlearning) environment, this is managed by a teacher or facilitator. In such a managed situation, the teacher can use spontaneous events to trigger such research. 

In a digital environment the use of discovery learning has to be driven by the student, but you must insert these opportunities into your design. The Internet is, to all intents and purposes, an unlimited source of discovery. Where possible, you should include research options in your training content; “Click here to find out more about …” or “You may want to look on the Web for more information on this. A good place to start is …” This approach has inherent dangers in self-study world of elearning, as the student may find browsing the Internet more intriguing than completing your course. Here are some practical options for mitigating this danger:

• Your links should open a browser that does not include an address bar, so that students are not encouraged to wander off on their own.
• Your links should always open in a separate window, so that the training materials remain on screen.
• You should suggested a time limit or start time outside the current training: “You may want to spend five minutes reviewing …” or “When you have finished this section, try looking at …”

 

Provide Assessment and Knowledge Check Feedback

Assessment is important in any measurement of knowledge retention; if you don’t ask questions about the learning how will you know how much has been retained and for how long? Assessment can vary from in-course knowledge checks to accreditation or certification exams, where answers are tracked and maintained in a learning management system (LMS). In this section I will concentrate on knowledge checks, as these are designed to encourage, rather than test, knowledge retention.

We can differentiate between moderated training and self-study. In a moderated environment we must assume that the teacher provides on-going assessment through questioning and discussion. In an instructor-led course, you should include suggested questions or discussion topics and key learning points to ensure that the students are assessed on the information that you have identified as being key to the learning.

In the self-study world the onus for assessment is on you, the course designer. You should include knowledge checks, in the form of questions, social media discussion topics, or games in all training. Without these it is harder for the student to assess their own understanding and retention of the content.

You should always provide feedback on any question or task, as it provides reinforcement and an opportunity to review content. When a student does not provide the required answer I recommend that you tell them it is not correct, tell them the correct answer and identify where in your training they can find the information necessary to answer the question. If possible, provide a link to the page or section where they can review the content. If a student gives a correct answer you must also provide feedback. “That’s right. Well done” is fine, but you can reinforce learning by providing some additional information on the question topic or a link to some external content related to the topic. The latter provides an implicit reward—a sort of “You have done so well that you are ready to do some discovery learning on the topic”.

 

Provide Post-Event Learning

Many practitioners suggest that to avoid the dangers of the Forgetting Curve you should provide revision sessions or additional information to keeping the content in memory. While this may work neatly for remembering a series of random letter sets in a research study, it is less applicable for the world of training. Realistically, can you see a student reviewing everything from a training event with this regularity? Even if they did, do you really imagine that this will maintain 95% recall for anything but the most basic of knowledge? 

It is a good idea to provide post-course reinforcement to encourage knowledge retention. When you do this, you have to make sure that it is attractive to students, as there is seldom an on-going element of compulsion in attending post-training events. To encourage continued learning and reinforcement you can continue to provide additional revision content or you get the students to interact with each other about the topic. The former will require effort from you, while the latter is not as easy to track, so you cannot be certain of success. 

If you decide to create additional materials—and remember that just providing the same materials that were in the training is almost certain to be ignored by students—you must ensure that they focus on the key learning requirements, but with the flexibility to encourage additional research. The research has to be challenging but achievable, if there is no instructor to support student efforts.

Providing a social, learning community has the advantage of being self-sustaining. You can do something as simple as creating a common Twitter hash tag or a Pinterest or Google+ community and let it flourish or wither as the students see fit. The outcome of this approach is very much dependent on the students’ attitude towards such environments.

The third option is to provide a moderated revision area, where an instructor is present, synchronously or asynchronously, to help and advise the students. This is possible in the sphere of education (universities and colleges) but it can be expensive for businesses, though it has potential to encourage an acceptance of a life-long learning philosophy.

 

And in conclusion…

Retention is not simply a matter of telling students the same thing on a recurring basis, because being told the same thing every day is dull. You need to inspire your students by making your learning content:

• Applicable to their working lives.
• Focused on what you need them to know.
• Linkable, so that the students mind can build complex information into a manageable and memorable story.
• Multi-modal.
• Part of a learning and subject continuum—pre- and post-event.
• Motivating.
• Extensible through their own effort.
• Supported by checks and feedback.