{"id":26860,"date":"2018-05-09T09:30:43","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T13:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stagingweb.trainingindustry.com\/?post_type=magazine&p=26860"},"modified":"2018-05-09T13:37:39","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T17:37:39","slug":"why-post-training-reinforcement-cant-be-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/trainingindustry.com\/magazine\/may-jun-2018\/why-post-training-reinforcement-cant-be-overlooked\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Post-Training Reinforcement Can\u2019t Be Overlooked"},"author":7,"featured_media":26906,"template":"","tags":[2809,2808,2332,784],"class_list":["post-26860","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-boost-training","tag-content-chunking","tag-post-training","tag-reinforcement","global_topic_tax-content-development","global_topic_tax-strategy-alignment-and-planning","magazine_issue_tax-may-jun-2018","magazine_article_type_tax-feature"],"acf":{"sponsored":false,"gated":false,"gated_content_type":"","file_attachment":null,"gated_content":"","form_instruction_header":"To access the full article, please fill out the form below:","pardot_html_embed":"","author_override":true,"author_name":"Derek Smith","author_image":"","author_bio":"Derek Smith is a content marketing specialist with BizLibrary<\/a> who researches topics in the human resources and L&D fields, providing these professionals with the most up-to-date and relevant information available.","excerpt":"Learning and development (L&D) experts and corporate training professionals spend countless hours designing programs that are intended to help employees learn valuable skills, all in the hopes that it will make them better at their jobs.","main_content":"Learning and development (L&D) experts and corporate training professionals spend countless hours designing programs that are intended to help employees learn valuable skills, all in the hopes that it will make them better at their jobs. This intentional professional development benefits both the employee and the organization in a myriad of ways.\r\n\r\nThe ever-evolving world of talent development has largely moved online, and in recent years it has seen plenty of innovation, making learning about all sorts of topics easier and more effective.\r\n\r\nIn 2018, a lot is going right in the world of instructional design. More organizations are adopting microlearning methods, which give employees flexibility and control over their training. Well-produced microlearning takes long-form content and adapts it for short-form learning, which helps employees remember more of what is being taught.\r\n\r\nOne of the biggest challenges that will continue to dominate corporate training conversations is how organizations and learners can overcome the forgetting curve \u2013 the brain\u2019s natural loss of information that isn\u2019t being used. The forgetting curve is nothing new; in fact, the theory was first introduced in the late 19th<\/sup> century by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.\r\n\r\nEbbinghaus gathered data about learning retention over time and discovered that the brain\u2019s retention of information starts to fall drastically within just the first 24 hours.\r\n\r\nStudies suggest that as much as 90 percent of information is forgotten within 30 days, and 70 percent of that loss happens within one day.\r\n\r\nWhen you factor in the $160 billion annual budget that US businesses put into training, seeing 70 percent of that budget wasted after a single day is mind-boggling. Because of the fast rate at which we forget, your organization is probably spending more and seeing less in return. But the impact of the forgetting curve extends well past budget concerns.\r\n\r\nWhen you\u2019re training your employees about workplace safety, for instance, having employees forget 70 percent of what you\u2019ve taught them by the next day can be downright dangerous.","full_width":false,"content_band":[{"acf_fc_layout":"social_callout","blockquote":"Studies suggest that as much as 90 percent of information is forgotten within 30 days."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_area","wysiwyg":"The good news is that it is possible to counteract the forgetting curve and dramatically increase learning retention in training programs. Let\u2019s explore a few strategies that corporate trainers can apply to start seeing better learning retention and training application with your employees.\r\n\r\nContent Chunking<\/strong>\r\n\r\nContent chunking is a concept that was first introduced back in 1965 by Harvard psychologist George A. Miller. Miller hypothesized that the short-term memory could only hold five to nine chunks of information at a time.\r\n\r\nA study by the University of California found that in the modern workplace, employees are interrupted every 15 minutes, on average. That\u2019s just one reason why, in the reality of today\u2019s work environment, trainers can no longer rely on long-form e-learning courses to serve as a primary method of training.\r\n\r\nMicrolearning has been one of the biggest trends to hit the L&D scene since training first started moving online. Microlearning has been successful for multiple reasons, but its biggest benefit is that it focuses on chunks of learning content that have a narrow focus, rather than requiring a learner to only receive training from long, comprehensive courses.\r\n\r\nWhen you adapt content for smaller chunks, you\u2019re gaining a level of control over the amount of information your learners are retaining. Effectively spacing out this chunking means that you can offer memorable, comprehensive content that will be better retained.\r\n\r\nReinforce Learning<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAnother effective strategy to overcome the forgetting curve is to test learned material. Many employers require employees to take quizzes over the content they\u2019ve viewed, and while that\u2019s certainly a step in the right direction, there are multiple other ways to ensure the reinforcement of training content is sufficiently preventing learning from being lost.\r\n\r\nReinforcement strategies can include having learners write down information, making quiz or test questions challenging, and providing memory boosts for the content. Some of these may sound obvious, but I\u2019ll go into more detail about each to emphasize why they work.\r\n\r\nWrite It Down<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThere should always be some response questions for learners to answer. This would require reviewing and possibly grading their responses, but studies show that writing down information shortly after first learning it works the verbal working memory, which is a part of the short-term memory.\r\n\r\nUsing questions that ask employees to put learned information into their own words forces them to recall and restate information. By writing the information down, learners use more channels to retain that information and understand how to turn learning into application.\r\n\r\nMake it Hard<\/strong>\r\n\r\nDoctors often put medical residents on the spot by asking very challenging, specific questions. These questions aren\u2019t designed to necessarily be answered correctly at the time, but rather to help the resident remember the correct answer afterward.\r\n\r\nWhen learners are forced to recall information by having to answer tough questions, two things generally happen. Either the learner remembers the answer and the new knowledge is reinforced more strongly, or the learner gets the question wrong, but the correct answer is committed to memory due to the difficulty of the question.\r\n\r\nTo see learning retention improve over time, the brain has to be challenged so that it better understands information and can apply it to different situations. This is what learning agility is all about.\r\n\r\nBoost the Content<\/strong>\r\n\r\nProfessor Henry Roediger at Washington University in St. Louis has done extensive research on learning reinforcement, and his findings demonstrate that forced recall is the best way to counteract the forgetting curve and help learners retain information in the long run.\r\n\r\nDr. Roediger led a study wherein he invited students at the University to examine a series of photographs and remember as many of them as they could. Afterwards, one group left the lab, while a second group took a brief quiz where they simply wrote down as many of the photos as they could remember. A third group was given this same quiz three times in a row.\r\n\r\nWhen all the students returned to the lab a week later and were asked to recall the photos, they found that the more recall opportunities a group had initially, the more photos the students recalled. The first group (no recall opportunity) remembered an average of 17.4 photos, the second group (one recall opportunity) remembered an average of 23.3 photos, and the third group (three recall opportunities) remembered 31.8 photos.\r\n\r\nIn another study done by Dr. Henry Roediger and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke, they wanted to investigate how repeated studying stacks up compared to repeated testing. Three different groups of subjects were given four chances to study or be tested:\r\n