I learn a lot and this is every single day. I learned about stuff in the last week that would make most people’s head spin. So first, what I do is write it down. The act of writing it down, sorting it, helps, then I might write a little piece about it. It’s not always easy to do so. All this writing takes time. If it’s in audio, I’ll listen to it. Once, twice, many times. So why do we forget so much?
The brain is not designed to retain everything at full volume. It’s a natural spam filter. To get it to pay attention you have to force it to remember.
But yes, the best way to learn is to teach. You’ll have to find a way to write or do something so that you’re forced to teach.
In 24 hours, someone has forgotten 75% of what you have just said, and within 30 days forget 90%. Well, I honestly believe it all depends on the learner. Some retain more than others, right?I will try to explain the complexity of human learning. I explain that forgetting depends on many things, for example:
The type of material that is being learned
The learners’ prior knowledge
The learners’ motivation to learn
The power of the learning methods used
The contextual cues in the learning and remembering situations
The amount of time the learning has to be retained
The difficulty of the retention test
More meaningful materials (like stories) tend to be easier to remember than less meaningful material (like nonsense syllables). More relevant concepts tend to be easier to remember than less relevant concepts. Learners who have more prior knowledge in a topic area are likely to be better able to remember new concepts learned in that area.More motivated learners are more likely to remember than less motivated learners. Learners who receive repetitions, retrieval practice, feedback, variety (and other potent learning methods) are more likely to remember than learners who do not receive such learning supports.
Learners who are provided with learning and practice in the situations where they will be asked to remember the information will be better able to remember. Learners who are asked to retrieve information shortly after learning it will retrieve more than learners who are asked to retrieve information a long time after learning it.
Truths that every learning professional should deeply understand.
The amount a learner will forget varies depending on many things. We as learning professionals will be more effective if we make decisions based on a deep understanding of how to minimise forgetting and enhance remembering.Rules-of-thumb that show people forgetting at some pre-defined rate are just plain false. In other words, learning gurus and earnest bloggers are wrong when they make blanket statements like, “People will forget 75% of what they learned within a day of learning it.”
Learning interventions can produce profound improvements in long-term remembering. In other words, learning gurus are wrong when they say that training is not effective.
Different learning methods produce widely different amounts of forgetting.
We as learning professionals can be more effective if we take a research-based approach and utilise those learning methods that are most effective.
