Learning Myths: The Forgetting Curve
Anyone involved in education in anyway will have come across the Forgetting Curve, if you’re a teacher you would have been shown it in your first few weeks of teacher training, it’s one of those ideas that has been around for over a century. But in reality, there’s very few uses of the forgetting curve teaching today, The forgetting curve is at best incomplete, and possibly needs to be replaced all together, let’s explore why.
Wait, I missed the memo…What’s The Forgetting Curve?
Let’s have a quick refresh, the forgetting curve is a visual representation of how we forget information. If we learn something new, and make no effort to remember it, we forget most of it within a day, and within a week nearly all of it. Now we all know there is some truth to it, from our own personal experience, however there are a few things we need to be aware of.
A bit of background
This graph was first drawn in the late 1880’s, by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. He wanted to create an equation to show how people forget things. To create the forgetting curve, he carried out an experiment on himself, to do this, he compiled a list 2,300 of “nonsense syllables”, three random letters put together, for example JRD, KYW, UQH — you get the idea.
Once he had his collection of syllables, he followed this method:
- He would pull out a number of random syllables from a box and write them down in a notebook.
- To a sound of a metronome, and with the same voice inflection, he would read out the syllables.
- He tested himself at various intervals, twenty minutes after studying, an hour, a day and a week.
- He recorded how many he could remember.
His study was meticulous, any fellow scientists reading this will appreciate some of the controls he placed on his experiment, such as:
- He was careful to ensure that no three letter words made it into his list (such as dog, cat, and etc.) because he was aware these would be easier to remember.
- He applied the same process of learning every single time he did it.
So although it was an impressive study, and it was one of the first experiments recorded in the science of learning, there were a lot of limitations to his study.
- He was the only participant in this study — today that paper wouldn’t even get published, it’s an incredibly small sample size and the experimenter and the subject are the same person!
- He was studying, literally nonsense! How often do we want our students to remember lists of nonsense?
We need to note that the brain struggles to remember nonsense syllables, because they are, well, nonsense, they’re not related to anything, they’re not part of structured language and don’t follow any patterns, and they’re not useful. Ebbinghaus even acknowledged as much himself, stating that his curve might not apply to anything more than what he had studied directly. Are you really going to base all your teaching theory on one experiment, with a sample size of one, carried out nearly 150 years ago?
So what actually affects how well my learners remember?
Say you’re an L&D trainer, who has been tasked with training some new clients on some software, what might affect how well the learners in your class remember how to use your software?
- Prior knowledge: If half your learners have been working in the industry for years, the others are new graduates. The learners with experience in the field will remember far more about how the software works. They will be more familiar with the concepts and the terminology you are using, greatly reducing their cognitive load throughout your workshop, allowing them to focus on how to use the software.
- Relevance: Which learners in your class will be using the features you are showing regularly? If they will be using it a lot, they will remember far more.
- Importance: If there is a risk of making a mistake using your software that will cause a negative impact on your learners, they will be far more likely to remember if you highlight this to them.
- Individual differences: Some people just remember better than others. Some people will be more alert in your workshop, more focused, better prepared and other factors beyond your control.
Whilst there will be benefits to sending out resources after the workshop, and you should of course do this, don’t fret too much about ensuring the perfect timings of resources going out, unless of course your job is to teach people lists of nonsensical words.
