If You Think Training Should Make Learning Easy, You Are Doing It Wrong

Have younoticed that while using GPS for directions is an effective way of getting toyour destination, it hasn’t significantly improved your knowledge of geography?If you are like most users of maps and satellite data, you probably have foundthat even if you followed the directions from your GPS device precisely on yourfirst trip to an address, repeating the same trip without the aid of GPS isless successful.

On the otherhand, you likely have also found that once you’ve worked to find a location onyour own, following verbal directions or even simply driving around looking foran address, you have a much stronger knowledge of where the location is and howto get there.

In otherwords, even though GPS provides effective guidance to a location through clearand simple directions (i.e., it provides good performance support), it is lesseffective at teaching you how to get somewhere than if you were putting in moreeffort with less guidance (i.e., using GPS does not lead to effectivelearning).

Why doeseffort help learning? In this article, we explore this question and offer someideas to help you increase the effectiveness of your eLearning products.

Divergent training: performance support versus performance learning

In the workenvironment, the GPS example can help us to understand how learning works and todescribe divergent forms of training. In corporate training, there are twotypes of goals to keep in mind:

1) There are certain tasks that youwant people to perform well, but do not necessarily want them to memorize orlearn. It may be a task that is used very rarely or for a system or procedurethat is likely to change in the future. For instance, a worker who occasionallyneeds to upload a file to a particular database may need guidance only in theform of quick and handy directions. Learning the steps of an infrequent task insoftware that might change every few months isn’t worth the time.

2) There are other tasks or skills thatyou want people to both perform well and learn well, so that the knowledge isboth durable (it lasts into the future) and flexible (it can be used indifferent situations). These are tasks that are likely to recur frequently or thatare central to a job, such as guidelines for dealing with clients, office HRpolicies, or repeated tasks on a manufacturing floor where every instancecounts and there is little time for retraining or on-the-job referencing.

These twodifferent goals suggest divergent training procedures: For the former, it isenough to simply provide performance support—deliver guidance and support toemployees only when they need it. For the latter, however, we ought to shiftour thinking from performance support to performance learning, and we should carefully consider howwe can enhance future performance in the absence of direct guidance.

Incorporating desirable difficulties to enhance learning

When it comesto learning, research from cognitive psychology tells us the trainingprocedures that support performance can actually hinder long-term learning.Training procedures that focus on enhancing only current performance oftenprovide crutches that allow learners to bypass the effort and engagementnecessary to learn. On the other hand, certain “desirably difficult” conditionsof learning that more actively and effortfully engage learners lead to betterlong-term learning. (Bjork, 1994; Rohrer and Pashler, 2010; Yan, Clark, andBjork, 2016. See the References at the end of this article.)

Examples ofdesirable difficulties include:

• Retrievalpractice. Requiring people to retrieve information from memorybefore providing corrective feedback, versus simply telling them what to do,will ensure that the learner is better able to recall that informationindependently the next time it is needed (Kornell, Bjork, and Garcia, 2011;Roediger, Putnam, and Smith, 2011).
• Spacing.Spreading trainingout over multiple shorter sessions, rather than concentrating training in a singlelong session, leads to stronger and better-sustained learning (Baddeley andLongman, 1978; Carpenter, et al, 2012).
• Interleaving. Mixing up the introduction to andthe practice of different skills, rather than focusing on one skill at a time,leads to both stronger long-term learning as well as greater ability toflexibly call up the skills as they are needed (Hall, Domingues, and Cavazos,1994; Kornell and Bjork, 2008).
• Variability.Varying theconditions under which a task is practiced—for example, seeing a task completedor explained in a different way, or practicing in different locations—strengthenslearning. Learners often make mistakes when something unexpected happens orwhen there is something a little bit different about the situation, and these mistakesare more likely to occur when training is highly and rigidly contextualized(Smith and Handy, 2014; 2016).

These“desirable difficulties” can be counterintuitive (Bjork, Dunlosky, and Kornell,2013; Yan, Clark, and Bjork, 2016) because they often temporarily lower currentperformance, leading people to make more mistakes early in training or appearto be learning slowly: Asking people to retrieve information that is not yetwell-learned may lead to errors, may feel difficult, or may appear to be lessefficient than simply telling them the answer. Breaking what would otherwise bea long training session into multiple shorter sessions encourages helpfulforgetting between these sessions. Interleaving practice or different skillsmay heighten a sense of confusion or difficulty early on during training. And introducingvariability may appear to hinder quick (yet thoughtless) automaticity. 

Yet, all ofthese methods have been demonstrated time and time again to make learning stickmore effectively and efficiently. Inother words: Harder learning leads to better learning.

Implications for the workplace

Toeffectively provide performance learning, training must necessarily lookdifferent from performance support. Thisrequires a different mindset about what “learning” means. Learning is not just about performing tasks or immediatelyregurgitating information after a single training session. Effective learningis necessarily active, requires revisiting information over time, andintegrates mistakes and challenges into the learning process.

This implies thatwe should provide a space for “safe failures” during training to allow peopleto be challenged and learn through mistakes. We should neither demand immediateperfect performance nor expect that training is complete after a singlesession.

But iftraining is spaced out over time, what does this mean for performance on thejob in the meantime? Hybrid methods that combine both desirable difficultiesand performance support may be the answer: For example, in addition to spacinglearning out over time, you could inject performance support (e.g., crammedtraining) right before the task or skill is needed on the job.

Assuaging fears and persuading managers

There are twomajor challenges to implementing performance learning:

1) Motivating change. How do we convince managers toshift away from more intuitive but less effective modes of learning? Managershave to balance short- and long-term concerns, but more effective learning hasbenefits for both, since desirably difficult learning doesn’t require youremployees to take more time out of their jobs. In fact, given the righttechnology, training that comes at intervals in shorter, 10- or 20-minutebursts (e.g., directly to a workstation or mobile device) may be more time- andcost-effective than spending an entire work day with your employees gathered infront of a hired trainer.

2) Anxiety.Another concern isthat the initial difficulty can increase anxiety in employees, who may arriveat training with an expectation that they should be able to master new skillsquickly. We have two responses to this concern: First, increased difficulty orchallenge does not necessarily have to be unpleasant. Challenge can beinteresting, rewarding, and perhaps even fun. If we can correct and shift ourassumptions from “learning should be easy” to “difficulty and errors are anintegral part of the learning process,” we sidestep many of theseanxiety-related issues. Second, ill-designed training that supports accurateperformance during training without promoting learning does not eliminate anxiety. Rather, it simplypostpones anxiety and errors to ahigh-stakes situation on the job. We propose that any anxiety is better broughtforward into an environment of “safe failure” and true learning.

“No pain, no gain”

It istempting to believe that we should make learning easy and provide supportwherever possible. Like a lot of other worthwhile goals in life, however, deepand robust learning emerges from more effort, not less. Instead of fearingfailures and cheating ourselves out of real learning opportunities, we shouldinvest in shifting our modes of instruction toward empirically driven“desirably difficult” strategies. Leveraging scientific research from cognitivepsychology can lead to more productive training and provide an effectivelong-term strategy for efficient care of your organization’s knowledge.

Note: For more about the theory behind how we learn andthe implications for performance support, see this short nine-minute video by Veronica Yan. 

References

Baddeley, A.D., and D.J.A. Longman. “The Influence of Length andFrequency of Training Session on the Rate of Learning to Type.” Ergonomics, Vol. 21, No. 8. 1978.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140137808931764(subscription or payment required for access)

Bjork, Robert A. “Memory and Metamemory Considerations in the Trainingof Human Beings.” In Metacognition:Knowing about Knowing, edited by Janet Metcalfe and Arthur P. Shimamura. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1994.
https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/RBjork_1994a.pdf

Bjork, Robert A., John Dunlosky, and Nate Kornell. “Self-Regulated Learning: Beliefs,Techniques, and Illusions.” Annual Reviewof Psychology, Vol. 64. January 2013.
https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/RBjork_Dunlosky_Kornell_2013.pdf

Carpenter, Shana K., Nicholas J. Cepeda, Doug Rohrer,Sean H.K. Kang, and Harold Pashler.“Using Spacing to Enhance Diverse Forms of Learning: Review of Recent Researchand Implications for Instruction.” EducationalPsychology Review, Vol. 24, No. 3. September 2012.
https://www.yorku.ca/ncepeda/publications/CCRKP2012.pdf

Hall, Kellie Green, Derek A. Domingues, and RichardCavazos.“Contextual Interference Effects with Skilled Baseball Players.” Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 78, No.3. June 1994.
https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/1994-hall.pdf

Kornell, Nate, and Robert A. Bjork. “Learning Concepts and Categories:Is Spacing the ‘Enemy of Induction’?” PsychologicalScience, Vol. 19, No. 6. July 2008.
https://psych.colorado.edu/~ketels/psych4145/Kornell.Bjork.2008a.pdf

Kornell, Nate, Robert A. Bjork, and Michael A. Garcia. “Why tests appear to preventforgetting: A distribution-based bifurcation model.” Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. 65, No. 2. August 2011.
https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/Kornell_RBjork_Garcia_2011.pdf

Roediger, Henry L., III, Adam L. Putnam, and Megan A.Smith. “TenBenefits of Testing and Their Applications to Educational Practice.” Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol.55. 2011.
https://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy%20article%20PDF’s/BC_Roediger%20et%20al%20(2011)_PLM.pdf

Rohrer, Doug, and Harold Pashler. “Recent Research on Human LearningChallenges Conventional Instructional Strategies.” Educational Researcher, Vol. 39, No. 5. June/July 2010.
https://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer&Pashler2010ER.pdf

Smith, Steven M., and Justin D. Handy. “Effects of Varied and ConstantEnvironmental Contexts on Acquisition and Retention.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,Vol. 40, No. 6. November 2014.
https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/stevesmith/SmithMemory/SmithHandy2014.pdf

Smith, Steven M., and Justin D. Handy. “The crutch of context-dependency:Effects of contextual support and constancy on acquisition and retention.” Memory, Vol. 24, No. 8. 2016.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2015.1071852(subscription or payment required for access)

Yan, Veronica. “The Surprising Dynamics Behind How We Learn:Implications for Performance Support” (video). YouTube. 17 June 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7recblttpoA&feature=youtu.be