So, you have a user-friendly learning platform and your content is engaging, you’re all set, right? Wrong! What you do after your training is just as if not more important that the training itself.
According to Art Kohn, Fulbright Professor of Cognitive Science (and phenomenal speaker at this year’s DevLearn), 70% of all training is forgotten within 24 hours of the training. That number is staggering, especially if your learning program is doing nothing to combat the forgetting curve. If the brain is not using or forced to recall information, it intentionally deletes it. We’ve all heard the saying, “use it or lose it”.
To ensure information from a course extends retained and not used just to pass an exam, you must help the learner to recall the information days, weeks, and even months after the initial learning event. This method can range from short quizzes, forum posts, short answer questions, etc. that the learner receives over the course of the training period that serve as booster events to continuously challenge what the learner has learned from the initial learning event.
This sort of after-training will cause the learner’s brain to tag the information as important, marking it safe from deletion (which supports the “use it or lose it” methodology). With the combination of a quality learner experience, learning engagement within the content itself, and after training to insure learning retention, you will begin to see an improved ROI from your learning program.