The Power of Learning and Forgetting Curves

Dr. Will Thalheimer provides an in-depth look at his work on learning and forgetting curves in the following video that you can access from his Will at Work Learning blog.

I think Dr. Thalheimer's work is extremely relevant in the field of career and technology education as we design and employ learning interventions. We need to analyze not only how we train our students, but what is the result of the training on performance? Did we engage the learner and build understanding during training? After training, did we provide additional learning, prompting mechanisms, reminding mechanisms, and applications for learning? Did we remember that measurement is also an important aspect in the evaluation of learning?

Please watch the following video to understand the power of learning and forgetting curves:



I hope you also took time to consider Dr. Thalheimer's "7 Step Training Maximizer Model" that is at the end of the video. This action item will help ensure that learning curves occur during and after training and the effects of the forgetting curve should be minimized.