Stop us if you've heard this one: each of us has a "learning style," (a “preference”) -- i.e., a preferred way of assimilating information. Some of us are auditory learners -- we learn by listening . Some of us are visual learners, which is why images play such a vital role when we sit down to learn something new or when we design content for our learners. Some are kinesthetic learners -- we “learn by doing." That is: we learn by touching, moving, and interacting with content in order to integrate new information with prior knowledge (to develop new knowledge) as participants in the learning process.
How about this one? People generally remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they hear and see... This is often referred to as “Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience.”
Unfortunately, both concepts have been widely disputed as myths for lack of scientific evidence to back them up.
According to Paul Howard-Jones in a 2014 paper titled: “Neuroscience and Education: Myths and Messages,” this isn’t necessarily due to willful manipulation of data. More likely, the creation of these ‘neuromyths’ stems from differences in terminology and language, or perhaps other cultural conditions.
Will Thalheiemer, Ph.D., calls the Edgar Dale Cone of Experience "neuromyth" a co-mingling of two separate memes:
Edgar Dale's original “Cone of Experience” which did not come with any numbers, and
A different neuromyth of learning retention rates
So what are the facts about how people learn, and how much do they forget?
Dr. Thalheiemer says: “forgetting depends."
For example, it could depend upon the methods a learner uses to absorb information. Pam Mueller, Ph. D., and Daniel Oppenheimer, Ph.D., published a paper titled: "The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard" in which they identified a correlation between taking notes longhand (and the information that was retained) vs. taking notes using a keyboard. They concluded that the act of writing notes engages the brain in processing the information as you go. And, because we tend to write slower than someone (such as a trainer or professor) speaks, we're also forced to decide as we go what's worth writing down.
Which brings to mind the neurological studies about how the brain filters all the stimuli that surround us.
"As an information-processing organism, we are hardwired with an automatic ability to filter out perceptual irrelevancies," Harold D. Stolovich said in the beginning of his 2002 book: “Telling Ain't Training.” "From a training perspective, that is very important. ... if the learner unconsciously does not feel that the information is vital to his or her needs, the autonomic system may raise the threshold of sensory input and filter out what is being transmitted. As a result, there is no perception ... no learning."
You probably saw this occur in one of your training sessions when one or two of your attendees locked eyes with you while you were speaking, and decided in that moment your message wasn’t relevant and “checked out” of the training, perhaps checking his/her phone for emails and/or searching the web.
In other words, people stop learning when they decide new information isn’t important/relevant to them. (Did we just explain teenagers?)
All this neuroscience discussion is to suggest that as talent development professionals, we owe it to our learners to cut through the clutter of neuromyths and educate ourselves about how the brain works. If it's important to us that talent development remain an integral function in the corporate world, the next step forward in our industry is not one that clings to simplistic models, but instead takes a step forward and embraces a scientific approach that continues to question how we learn and apply those answers into continuously evolving training interventions.
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You can continue this discussion on neuromyths in this month’s Learning Event: The Myths and Magic of Neuroscience in Business, where presenter Tim Field, Ph.D. Neuropsychology, will explore the successful ways neuroscience can be applied to the challenges we face as talent development professionals.
Wednesday, February 24 -- 6:00 pm - 8:15 pm
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