When we do learning, we must be active. That is, it’s not enough to receive information. (Unless we’re actively practicing and attending presentations are reflection.) We must do! Then the question becomes one of doing ‘what’? I’m seeing too many of the wrong sorts of things in play, so it’s worth asking: what sorts of activities should we be doing?
Cognitively, we need to perceive information to get it into working memory. From there, to get into long-term memory – and be useful – we need to elaborate and practice retrieval. Elaboration is the process whereby we strengthen connections between the new material and the familiar. This increases the likelihood of activation in context. Then, we need to practice retrieving the knowledge for use. This strengthens our ability to retrieve and apply as we need.
One thing to note is that research shows that we don’t need to retrieve the fact-based knowledge before practicing retrieval to actually use. Our goal for organizational learning is to use information to make meaningful decisions. Better fact-recall isn’t likely to be what will help your organization thrive. Instead, what matters is acquiring the new skills that will define the ability to adapt.
For elaboration, what we increasingly hear is about ‘generative‘ learning activities. These are when you’re taking new information, and processing it more deeply. It can involve rephrasing, visualizing, and of course connecting it to your prior experience. These activities help strengthen the information into long-term memory.
An associated task it to practice using the information. That is, putting learners into situations where they need to use the new information to make decisions that they couldn’t before. The ideal situation, of course, is mentored live practice, but…there are limitations. Individual mentoring isn’t always cost-effective. Also, live practice may have consequences for wrong answers. In many cases, we use simulations. These can be programmed, or branching scenarios. Even mini-scenarios (e.g. better written multiple-choice questions) are a good option.
What we don’t need are fact-check questions. As above, there’s no real benefit. They may make us feel good, but they aren’t inclined to make us better at using the information. There are lots of bad practices around this. We can just use knowledge questions, thinking we’re helping learning (and not). Worse, I’ve seen many cases where they’re asking for arbitrary bits of information that aren’t highlighted. Also, too often we’re presenting way too much information than people can remember at one time (or at all).
So, if we’re to design effective learning, what sorts of activities is an important question. We don’t need fact-checks. We do benefit from processing, and retrieval. That’s worth practicing and performing. Review your work and look at what you’re having learners do. If it’s not elaboration and retrieval, you’re wasting learners’ time and your efforts. Why do that?