Learning “Myth” #1: Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve is one of the best-known results in learning theory. The Curve demonstrates that what humans remember after a learning event drops steeply soon after completion of the event. In fact, within a month, they will forget up to 80% of what they have learned: So, what do we mean when we …

Learning Myths, Pseudo-Myths, Exaggeration and Hype

If the profession of cognitive psychology and its application to learning is a science (as some of us think it is or should be), then there needs to be research evidence to back up our claims about which learning strategies work and which do not. Unfortunately, the profession of adult learning is prone to myths, …

Low Competence/ High Confidence: There’s a Name for That

In our implementation of confidence-based learning we classify each test taker into one of four categories of confidence accuracy: Green  -- this is the goal state. The employee is both knowledgeable and confident. Yellow – the employee is knowledgeable, but is not confident in his/her knowledge Orange – the employee is neither knowledgeable nor confident. …

The Final Nail in the Coffin for Learning Styles?

In my workshop on the “Science and Practice of Modern Learning” I like to occasionally throw in a learning myth – things we think we know about learning, but that turn out not to have any research basis. One of the most pernicious myths is that of Learning Styles -- the idea that all individuals …

What is Modern Learning?

  In 1964 the Supreme Court had before it an obscenity case in which the outcome of the case hinged on the definition of obscenity. In his ruling Justice Potter Stewart issued an opinion that has become one of the most quoted Supreme Court opinions of all time. He wrote: I shall not today attempt …

What is Subscription Learning — by Dr. Will Thalheimer

In my last blog post I argued that for microlearning to be effective the individual learning nuggets must be embedded within a larger learning strategy. In Intela, we call this larger strategy "Learning Subscriptions." After I wrote the post I came across an article written in 2014 by Dr. Will Thalheimer (www.work-learning.com) making a similar …

Making Microlearning Effective Using Learning Subscriptions

Last month I attended a life sciences learning conference. By far, the most discussed topic was microlearning. Everyone – learners, trainers, management – has jumped on the microlearning bandwagon. We have decided, en masse, that our learners will learn best when they are presented with their learning in short chunks. Vendors, of course, are no …

Authentic Assessments

I teach a workshop on “How to Create Fair, Valid and Reliable Tests.” The workshop focuses primarily on classic (usually multiple choice) knowledge-based exams. Since many of our clients use the Intela platform for sales training, most of them deliver two types of assessments: knowledge-based assessments to ensure content mastery and skills-based assessments to test …

Answering Questions Out Loud Helps Your Learners to Remember

I recently came across an interesting study about the value of answering questions out loud. Victor Boucher of the University of Montreal tested student’s ability to memorize lists of words under four conditions. First, the students studied a list of words on a computer. He then divided the students into four groups and had each …

What Do We Remember Best? What We Learn First? What We Learn Last? Both? Neither?

Any of our readers who have studied education in college or graduate school may be familiar with the “primacy and recency” effect. This effect was first detected by our old friend Hermann Ebbinghaus who is, of course, most famous for his well-known forgetting curve. Ebbinghaus noticed that in a test of free recall of a …