Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2018 - 19

recall is the best way to counteract the
forgetting curve and help learners retain
information in the long run.
Dr. 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.
When 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.
In another study done by Dr. Henry
Roediger and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke, they
wanted to investigate how repeated

STUDIES SUGGEST
THAT AS MUCH
AS 90 PERCENT
OF INFORMATION
IS FORGOTTEN
WITHIN 30 DAYS.
studying stacks up compared to
repeated testing. Three different groups
of subjects were given four chances to
study or be tested:
* Study, study, study, study (SSSS)
* Study, study, study, test (SSST)
* Study, test, test, test (STTT)
Their findings (see Figure 1) were
interesting because the group that only
studied showed the highest recall of
information after only five minutes had
passed, but after a week had passed,
the group that only studied once and

Proportion of Idea Units Recalled

FIGURE 1

SSSS
SSST
STTT

0.8

0.7

was tested three times averaged a
much higher recall than the group that
only studied.
When tested one week after the initial
studying and testing had been done, the
amount of forgetting by the SSSS group
was 52 percent, for the SSST group it
was 28 percent, and for the STTT group
it was only 10 percent.
Roediger's findings in this study show
the great importance of providing tests,
or any opportunity for recall besides
simply going over the information again.
Your learners want to retain information
that applies to them, but unless the
brain is shown that this information is
worth remembering, it is likely to let
it go. When information is brought to
the learner's mind, the brain begins to
acknowledge it as important. By testing
with difficult questions that encourage
the learner to write, you can significantly
increase the amount of information your
learners retain.
Retention is absolutely crucial in an
economy where $160 billion is spent by
U.S. businesses on employee learning
and training.
Organizations simply cannot afford to let
90 percent of those dollars go to waste,
but without learning reinforcement
strategies in place, that money put
into employee training is being
flushed away by the human brain's
natural processes.
To combat the forgetting process and get
the highest level of learning retention
out of your training content, be sure to
offer small chunks of learning at a time,
provide difficult quiz questions, and
reinforce the learning with tests spaced
out over time.

0.6

0.5

0.4

5 Minutes

1 Week

Retention Interval

Derek Smith is a content marketing specialist
with BizLibrary who researches topics in the
human resources and L&D fields, providing
these professionals with the most up-todate and relevant information available.
Email Derek.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2018