Repeat Repeat Repeat

One of the simplest learning retention tips is to repeat what you’ve learned in spaced intervals over time.

“Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.” Plato

Educators and those who research and study how we learn best have always been trying to figure out how to optimize learning. Over time it’s been concluded there are various ways we can improve retention. For me, the easiest retention strategy to understand and implement is to keep repeating something in spaced intervals to solidify the learning.

In instructional design and learning theory circles there is a famous, if somewhat troubling, fact that has plagued educators and instructional designers for years. The person who first identified this troubling fact was Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who was a pioneer in studying memory and how memory ties to learning.

What Ebbinghaus discovered through his research is often referred to as the “forgetting curve.” In short, the forgetting curve demonstrated that people tend to forget about 90 percent of what they learn within about 30 days. 90 percent, in just 30 days! Even worse, most of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after the learning takes place. So, that’s the bad news.