Publish at March 01 2011 Updated February 01 2023
And how do you retain? To this question, no single answer. Not only because everyone has their own tricks for better memorizing the learning they have done, but also because with the same content, with the same amount of time between the time of learning and the time of retrieval, the results vary considerably from one individual to another.
This is what learning expert Professor Will Talheimer set out to demonstrate in a report entitled "How Much Do People Forget?", which can be freely downloaded from his website. A blog post by the same professor provides us with some key points.
To back up his claims, Talheimer studied various research papers dealing with learning memory.
First of all, it's important to know that statements like "You forget 40 percent of what you learn in 20 minutes and 77 percent in six days" are completely fanciful. Research shows that it is impossible to establish a range, even a large one, of percentage of content memorized in a given period of time. For example, one to two days after learning something, those who followed it forgot 0-73% of what they had learned. Even stronger: one to two years after a learning event, learners forgot between 16% and 94% of what they had learned!
What is also known is that memorization is influenced by many factors:
Will Talheimer emphasizes the importance of the learning methods used. The more meaningful the learning, the greater the memorization. Provided that the situation of restitution of learning is also meaningful.
He therefore recommends that teachers and other learning professionals:
- Admit that learners will forget... not to act as if they have retained once and for all!
- To align the learning situation and the feedback situation: in both cases, situate the learning and what needs to be remembered in context (this seems to be a key notion). Proceed by simulations, by scripted questions, through realistic practices, close to the context of real use of the knowledge supposedly acquired.
- To check with learners that they have memorized the learning in context, by evoking a situation similar to the one provided to them during the initial learning.
- To organize recall sessions for the most important knowledge, again by putting them in a context of use close to reality.
In reading these proposals, one thinks that they are common sense, but one must also admit that they hardly correspond to the way in which many school-based learning processes are carried out.
All of this impedes memorization.
Putting the learner at the center also means taking into account what we know (from experience and research findings) about the mechanisms of learning and memorization, admitting that motivation and priorities, which can be stimulated with realistic contextualizations and environments that the learner will enjoy discovering, are crucial in the process. There are some methods that are more suitable than others to facilitate memorization, let's use them.
How Much Do People Forget? Will at Work Learning blog, December 14, 2010.
How Much Do People Forget? Talheimer W, April 2010, full report downloadable in pdf at http://www.work-learning.com/catalog.html **
Illustration: LunchByte-Create-Learning-Rochester NY / Michael Cardus, Flickr / CC BY 2.0
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