The Forgetting Curve: How to Make Your New Training More Memorable
Have you heard of the forgetting curve?
We naturally forget 90% of what we learn. That's troubling to hear for those of us in L&D. All we think about is helping people learn and creating behavior change from that learning.
How can we do that If learners are forgetting the majority of what we teach them? That’s what we’re exploring in this episode.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
00:58 The forgetting curve
03:51 Making learning relevant
06:33 Making training meaningful
07:19 Making training fun
09:08 Providing wrap-around support
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The Forgetting Curve: How to Make Your New Training More Memorable
We naturally forget 90% of what we learn.
That's troubling to hear for those of us in L&D. All we think about is helping people learn and creating behavior change from that learning.
How can we do that If learners are forgetting the majority of what we teach them? That’s what we’re exploring in this blog post:
1) The Forgetting Curve
Have you ever heard of the forgetting curve?
Coined by the German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, in the late 19th century, the forgetting curve refers to how quickly we forget things and how little we actually remember.
I'll cut to the chase; here's what he found.
When learning something new, people forget about 50% of what they learned within one hour. Meaning your training ends, and one hour later, your learners can't remember half of what they learned.
It gets worse. By 24 hours, one day later, your learners forget 70% of what they learned.
Let's hope the other 30% is good, right?
Except it only gets worse from there. By the 30 day mark, your learners have forgotten 90% of what they learned. So in most cases, after a training, your learners may only be retaining 10% of what they learned in that training.
“Although corporations spend $60 billion a year on training, this investment is like pumping gas into a car that has a hole in the tank.” - Dr. Art Kohn, a cognitive scientist in the field of L&D.
Why do we forget so much?
Well, it’s actually a good thing although it might not seem like it. It's what allows us to focus on the most important things, and ignore all those things that are less important. But when it comes to training, we don't want our learners to forget what they learned.
So what do we do? Let’s explore some of the options below.
2) Make Training Relevant Through Habit Stacking Principles
The first way to make your training more memorable is to make it relevant.
We want to start where the learner is.
Have you ever read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear? If not, go ahead and add that one to your reading list. The book is all about how to create new habits or behavior change.
I have a blog post about how we can apply his principles to L&D: Applying the Laws of Behavior Change to Staff Development.
One of his principles is to make the change easy. He uses something called habit stacking for this. You take something that you already do and you add your new habit to the old one.
Let's say you want to drink more water. Every time you get up from your desk, you can refill your water cup. That's a reminder and a way to stack those habits. You already know you're going to get up from your desk multiple times a day, so grab your cup and refill it at the same time.
You're taking something you already do and you're adding to it, you're building on it.
The same goes for our memory. Take something your learners already know, already have experience with, already do, and build on that.
Here are some ways I've done that when I'm creating training for nonprofits.
Start with a time of reflection. Prompt your learners to think about an experience they've had that is relevant to what you want them to learn.
Use realistic scenarios. When you're creating a scenario for the training, make sure that that scenario is going to resonate with the learners. Make sure it's something they would actually experience on the job. Because as you do this, as they read those scenarios, and they work through those scenarios, they will be able to recall those real experiences and build on them.
Invite your learners into the discussion. Design questions that allow your learners to participate and share their experiences with their peers.
We want to start where they are.
3) Make Your Training Meaningful to Make It More Memorable
The second thing you can do to help your learners remember your training is to make it meaningful.
What's in it for them?
Why should your learners care?
How is it going to impact them on the job?
How will it make things easier for them?
How will it make things better for them?
Who will this change affect? Maybe them, maybe their teams, maybe their peers, maybe the people you're serving?
“What's in it for me?”
It needs to be meaningful.
4) Make Your Training Fun Through Storytelling and Improv
The third way you can help your learners remember your training is to make it fun.
Give them a unique experience they'll want to remember.
Everyone has a different meaning of the word fun, so you have to know your audience here.
Fun might mean solving a problem, collaborating, working in a more casual environment, or games. But no matter your learners’ definition of fun, one thing you can do is keep the training engaging and interactive.
Here are some methods I've used when creating training for nonprofits.
Storytelling. Storytelling is a great way to make training unique. And you can also use that story to make it meaningful and to make it relevant.
Improv. That's unexpected. Most people don't show up to training thinking they're going to be doing improv.
Analogies
Games
Polls
Interactive Experiences. Use tools like Mentimeter to create super interactive experiences, both in person and virtually.
This allows us to gather real-time input from our learners and then use that information in real-time. We can share that back and it can become part of the experience. And that's fun; that's unique.
We want to do the unexpected. Because when it's unexpected, unique, or fun, we remember more.
I have some episodes on making learning fun if you want to check those out.
Episode 63: 4 Ways to Use Humor and Storytelling in Your Nonprofit Training with Gita Kulkarni
Episode 36: How Nonprofit Learning and Development Leaders Can Use Play to Create Organizational Change with Acey Holmes
Episode 07: Do THIS and You Will Never Have a Boring Virtual Training Again with Melissa Dinwiddie
5) Include Wrap-around Support in Your Training
The last way to help people remember what they're learning is to use repetition.
Don't stop at the training.
Dr. Kohn, who I quoted earlier, did a lot of work around learning boosts. He uses this two-two-two cadence, meaning he asks learners a question about what they learned two days, two weeks, and two months after the training. And so there's this repetition. You're going back to learners and you're asking them to recall what they learned. I'm not one to argue with a cognitive scientist. So these boosts are worth exploring.
Here are a few other things I've also found helpful.
Job Aids. Any kind of tool or resource that you can create to help your learners implement the change when they're on the job is huge.
Community. If we can provide a group of people for our learners to talk to, ask questions, learn from, and share their experiences with, that's a big support and it helps them remember and implement what they learned.
Reminders. We can use prompts that will help learners remember the new behavior.
An Advisor. Either a coach or a mentor, someone who can help them as they face challenges when they're implementing that new behavior. That advisor can help them think through how to solve that problem or help them recall something they may have forgotten from the training.
So the next time you're creating your perfect training, remember the forgetting curve and make a few simple changes. We can make it relevant, we can make it meaningful, we can make it fun. Let's add some wrap-around support, and you'll see better results.
Better recall, more change, and greater impact.
To hear the full conversation I had on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 73.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Do you wish you could connect with other nonprofit learning and development leaders?
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work. Imagine if you could have a simple way to meet people in the field, ask questions, and share information.
That's why I created the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – so nonprofit L&D, talent management, and DEI leaders can connect with each other quickly and easily in a virtual space.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
