What Ebbinghaus means for designing learning interactions

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus published Über das Gedächtnis (‘On Memory’), describing his experiments on learning and forgetting. 

His work suggested that after learning something new, people generally forget the new information at an exponential rate, fastest in the first 20 minutes and levelling off after the first day or so. 

However, when we’ve just forgotten something, it turns out that it’s easier to relearn, and each time we relearn something, we forget it at a slower rate than the time before. 

So when we’re designing learning activities, we should be thinking about forgetting. 

• What supports are we giving in that first 20 minutes? 
• How are we supporting learners once they’ve finished our activities – are they going to get time to revisit their learning and refresh it while it’s still easy to relearn? 
• Will there be multiple revisions, spaced so it’s always easy to get back to full capability?

To me, it doesn’t matter what format we’re working in – instructor-led training, e-learning modules, interactive video, microlearning, project-based learning… 

What matters is whether we’re providing a review opportunity for everything new within that crucial first 20 minutes, and making sure people revisit concepts and skills repeatedly in the first days and weeks after they’ve first learnt something. 

It’s not an exact science, but generally I like to recommend reviews at one day, one week, five weeks, and 12 weeks. Because it’s not about teaching something new – more bedding in something the person already has – these interventions don’t have to be major. An intervention could be a discussion session, a quiz, or a scenario activity, or they could simply be planning in opportunities to apply new skills on the job, with support.

If we get it right, this should be a fundamental part of our design work: planning how learners can consolidate and apply their learning.

Originally published on my LinkedIn page on 20 November 2018.