Why shorter training sessions are more effective

Category: Coaching Notes

Introduction

Michael Skirving, Brefi Group Business Development Driector When the British Post Office wanted to teach keyboard skills to postal workers they discovered that those who trained for one hour a day learned in less time than those who trained for four hours a day �?? and continued to improve faster.

Brefi Group Business Development Director Michael Skirving explores why it is that you can learn more if you spend less time doing it.

Background

Over a hundred years ago, in the 1880�??s, the German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus broke away from a 2,000 year old belief that the study of memory was the sole domain of the philosopher. Ebbinghaus was the first person to make a scientific study of memory and learning by collating objective scientific evidence of the way memory worked rather than relying on differing philosophic interpretations. Whilst the previously held theories of memory were not totally discarded, Ebbinghaus wanted to produce evidence which would allow him to choose between these various theories.

By means of simple experimentation on himself, Ebbinghaus demonstrated that memory could indeed be investigated scientifically. Over the following two years he put down the fundamental characteristics of human memory we still use today.

The brain�??s storage system

There are three basic issues to address when assessing any information storage system:

How much information can be stored

How rapidly the data can be fed into a system

How quickly it is lost or decays

We may appreciate these key issues better if we consider some of our daily use storage devices such as tapes, CD�??s or hard drives on computer systems. All have a known capacity and an accepted way of receiving data but do we consider the decay of the physical materials which make up this media? You may be surprised to learn that CD�??s have a life of around 30 years and tape of less than 15 to maintain 100% integrity of the information they contain. The information decays over time; a little like old style faxes printed on thermal paper, the image rapidly vanishing when left exposed to sunlight.

When considering the human brain as a storage system, assessing the storage capacity has long been of interest to scientists and the only real conclusion to date is that whenever it is re-assessed, the new prediction of the brain�??s capacity far exceeds the previous assessment. Let�??s take it that the capacity of the human brain is enormous. Ebbinghaus therefore concentrated on the rate of input and the rate of forgetting (decay) and these are the areas of most interest when considering learning and development issues.

Speed of Information Input

Our first consideration is the rate at which information can be presented and registered in memory. Ebbinghaus came up with his total time hypothesis, which has been the subject of much study since then.

His Total Time hypothesis states simply �??you get what you pay for�?? and as a general rule of thumb it obeys the simple truth that the amount learned depends on the time spent learning. If you double the amount of learning time you double the amount of information stored. However, within this broad framework it has been discovered that there are ways in which better value can be obtained from the time spent learning.

Ebbinghaus discovered a phenomenon known as the 'distribution of practice effect', which demonstrated that it was better to distribute your learning over a prolonged time scale rather than cramming it all into a single block of learning. �??Little and often�?? is the key process here. This flies in the face of the issue of �??cramming�??, say for finals or exams, and studies show that whilst cramming may increase knowledge of those subjects crammed, it is to the detriment of other stored information. It has long been held that if students were asked to retake exams the following day there would be a significant reduction in the pass rate, as information crammed is quickly lost.

The Post Office experience

A well documented study of the distribution of practice effect was undertaken by the British Post Office when it needed to teach keyboard skills to postal workers when postcodes were introduced. These workers had to quickly observe and then key in postcodes as post passed them on a conveyor system. Four groups were identified and each consistently given differing rates of training from one session one hour a day through to sessions of four hours per day.

Whilst the one hour per day group took longer to progress in comparison with their four hours per day colleagues, which gave rise to some discontent amongst the students, it emerged that the one hour a day students learned as much in 55 hours as their four hours a day colleagues learned in 80 hours of training. Added to which, they appeared to continue to improve at a faster rate than the four hours per day group and retained their skills better when re-assessed a few months later. Distributed practice is more effective when practical and convenient to carry out. The use of coaching and mentoring is a good example of how distributed practice can be introduced and is proving an effective way to increase skill levels or improve performance amongst staff.

Reinforcing the learning

Micro-distribution practice is a further development of distributed practice, which is the advent of rehearsal and practice over shorter periods, like that used in learning a language. Tom Landauer and Robert Bjork developed the technique and showed that if you are presented with information and it is tested after a short delay, the information will be learned better. Then, as the item becomes better learned, the practice interval is gradually extended. The aim is to test each item at the longest interval at which it can be reliably recalled. If the learner fails an item then it is presented again after a shorter delay and lengthened again when accuracy increases. The net result of this approach is that the rate of failure during learning is minimised and the motivation of the learner to continue is maintained. This ingenious new technique gave rise for another researcher, Ulrich Neisser, penning this limerick:

You can get a good deal from rehearsal
If it just has the proper dispersal.
You would just be an ass if you did it en masse:
Your remembering would turn out much worsal.

Motivation

The Swedish researcher Lars-Gören Nilsson proved that the level of motivation of students had no effect on learning. He found that the use of inducements such as cash prizes for good performance and other social competition to increase motivation had no effect on the overall results of the learning.

However, this does not mean that motivation is irrelevant to learning, as it affects the time the student attends to the material to be learned; if students are interested, or kept interested, they are more likely to pay attention. If they are bored they are more likely to think of other things. Nilsson�??s work further highlighted that commitment and enthusiasm are determining factors of memory performance.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law, named after the researchers who discovered this relationship, further shows that performance increases as arousal increases. Arousal levels fluctuate through the day, rising slowly after waking up until the evening when they decrease again. Work done by Folkard and his colleagues at the University of Sussex, showed that learning in the morning had better instant recall than learning in the afternoon, which had better long-term recall. The indication here is that for longer-term memory, train after lunch!

Conclusion

Brefi Group�??s experience is that organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to release people for training. The ever increasing opportunity costs of staff being away from the workplace, not to mention the direct costs of maintaining them in a venue, are causing buyers of training to seek alternative solutions for learning and development in their organisations.

However, whereas a day or more away from work is a major disruption, a couple of hours is no more than the length of a typical meeting and can much more easily be arranged.

So, the study of memory and market need come together. The clients want less disruption from staff being taken away from work. And the theory shows that training delivered in smaller, shorter interventions is more effective.

Short, sharp workshops are more likely to cover only directly relevant information �?? keeping students committed �?? with trainers more likely to be able to maintain their own enthusiasm; and thus more likely to keep students interested.

The ultimate training session, therefore, is one of Brefi Group�??s 90-MinuteLearning sessions delivered during the afternoon.

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