I’ve checked to see if this has been asked before… please forgive me if I’ve missed it.
As part of a training programme my organisation is developing, we’re encouraging participants to put their learning into practice by undertaking ‘learning activities’ between each unit (and then feeding back on/reflecting on them with the group). One of the units also helps participants build communication/presentation skills and think about how best to get their messages across.
As one way of talking about both, we were planning to use the old ’x per cent of what we read… x per of what we do’ diagram. Until we tried to find a source for the figures and came across this: http://www.work-learning.com/chigraph.htm
Can anyone help with suggestions for better evidence/theory that might serve both of our purposes?
Huge thanks
Maggie Gibbons
Maggie Gibbons
3 Responses
Try the Industrial Society?
I was told, some years ago, that research had been done by the Industrial Society on how much we remember of what we see, hear and do. I think it went back decades! I think the Society has changed its format now, so I don’t know how easy it would be to find the original research.
How about including a session on the various learning styles/preferences, stressing that we need to use all available senses and styles to learn effectively and therefore need to do and then reflect as well as study the theory?
Good luck.
Learning by Doing Statistics
In the 1990s Motorola University compared the retention rates of different learning methods. As one of my pages on learning I have summarised these results – see http://www.simulations.co.uk/pyramid.htm
Hope that this helps.
Learning/Doing
In terms of learning and retention, it seems like a good idea to include the actual experiences of making presentations. The learning will be sharper and motivation clearer than through an abstract course alone.
I have heard it said that in the development of skills, 5% of individual effort is focused on gaining knowledge, 15% on developing the necessary skills and 80% in adapting and applying what they have learnt. As an industry we have not dealt with this 80% too well in the past and good luck with your attempt to address this.
This idea of learning through experience can be taken much further and I would be happy to talk about the new approaches coming on the market which address reinforcement of learning. Email me at [email protected] if you fancy a chat.
Graeme Kerr