Forgetting Curve: find out what it is and how to avoid it
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 7:18 am
One of the biggest nightmares for those who work with training and development is knowledge retention by employees.
There is a high investment by companies in the development of skills and competencies, which are not always reflected in day-to-day activities in the way that managers hope.
Improving an organization's intellectual capital depends on many factors, such as the content absorption capacity of an individual, a team, the company itself or even the suppliers hired to help achieve this objective.
In any case, the fact is that retaining knowledge is indeed kuwait email list quite challenging. Much of this deficit can be explained by the so-called Forgetting Curve, which is inherent to me, to you and to anyone you are training or are training at this very moment!
Want to know more about this theory and how understanding it will help you improve your classes? We’ll tell you everything in this article.
What is the Forgetting Curve?
You may have heard of this term before, but didn't give it the importance it deserved. Or, if you still don't know what the Forgetting Curve is, we'll explain it now.
The year was 1885, when German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus began studies to test the human capacity to fully store newly acquired information in the brain. His idea was to measure the effects of time on people's memories.
To do this, he tested himself. He memorized a series of lists of random syllables, with no obvious connection between them, to understand how long they would remain in his mind. This is where the Forgetting Curve came from.
The psychologist realized, after several samples, that after one day of memorization, the knowledge retained was limited to 50% of the total. On the second day, it was 30%. Evaluating period by period, he constructed a graph that measures this relationship between time and knowledge retention.
In other words, he proved that, regardless of the type of information we acquire, the brain tends to lead to forgetting.
Of course, there are several other factors that influence knowledge retention or lack thereof, however, to combat the Forgetting Curve, there is a simple technique that will help a lot in your training: the recurring use of content reviews.
Reviews, if used intelligently in knowledge trails, will help your students assimilate much more content, bringing practical and targeted application in the short, medium and long term.
Review: an ally to overcome the Ebbinghaus Curve
Incorporating revisions into the classroom process will enhance knowledge absorption, believe me. The suggestion here is that you work through four stages of revision, explained below:
Immediately
After a class ends, set aside 10% of the time to review the material. Make a list of the main points. For example, if the content takes about 60 minutes to complete, set aside five or six minutes to review everything that was covered.
24 hours later
Are you starting a new class the next day? Be sure to review what you covered the previous day. Take 10 minutes to revisit the content.
If we follow the reasoning behind the Forgetting Curve, both the following minutes and the first 24 hours are essential for consistently inserting information into the brain.
Seven days later
According to psychologist Ebbinghaus' theory, any content, if not revisited within a week, will only be retained by about 10% to 20%. Now, imagine all your efforts to create a training program going down the drain?!
To prevent classes from being forgotten, apply everything that was taught the previous week in a dynamic way. The goal here is to force the brain to recall those memories. According to the theory, just over five minutes is enough to retain about 90% of what was taught.
Thirty days later
It may seem like an exaggeration, but believe me, it is necessary to review the training one month after its implementation. At this stage, the objective is to give cadence to the review and keep the content already fixed alive.
There is a high investment by companies in the development of skills and competencies, which are not always reflected in day-to-day activities in the way that managers hope.
Improving an organization's intellectual capital depends on many factors, such as the content absorption capacity of an individual, a team, the company itself or even the suppliers hired to help achieve this objective.
In any case, the fact is that retaining knowledge is indeed kuwait email list quite challenging. Much of this deficit can be explained by the so-called Forgetting Curve, which is inherent to me, to you and to anyone you are training or are training at this very moment!
Want to know more about this theory and how understanding it will help you improve your classes? We’ll tell you everything in this article.
What is the Forgetting Curve?
You may have heard of this term before, but didn't give it the importance it deserved. Or, if you still don't know what the Forgetting Curve is, we'll explain it now.
The year was 1885, when German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus began studies to test the human capacity to fully store newly acquired information in the brain. His idea was to measure the effects of time on people's memories.
To do this, he tested himself. He memorized a series of lists of random syllables, with no obvious connection between them, to understand how long they would remain in his mind. This is where the Forgetting Curve came from.
The psychologist realized, after several samples, that after one day of memorization, the knowledge retained was limited to 50% of the total. On the second day, it was 30%. Evaluating period by period, he constructed a graph that measures this relationship between time and knowledge retention.
In other words, he proved that, regardless of the type of information we acquire, the brain tends to lead to forgetting.
Of course, there are several other factors that influence knowledge retention or lack thereof, however, to combat the Forgetting Curve, there is a simple technique that will help a lot in your training: the recurring use of content reviews.
Reviews, if used intelligently in knowledge trails, will help your students assimilate much more content, bringing practical and targeted application in the short, medium and long term.
Review: an ally to overcome the Ebbinghaus Curve
Incorporating revisions into the classroom process will enhance knowledge absorption, believe me. The suggestion here is that you work through four stages of revision, explained below:
Immediately
After a class ends, set aside 10% of the time to review the material. Make a list of the main points. For example, if the content takes about 60 minutes to complete, set aside five or six minutes to review everything that was covered.
24 hours later
Are you starting a new class the next day? Be sure to review what you covered the previous day. Take 10 minutes to revisit the content.
If we follow the reasoning behind the Forgetting Curve, both the following minutes and the first 24 hours are essential for consistently inserting information into the brain.
Seven days later
According to psychologist Ebbinghaus' theory, any content, if not revisited within a week, will only be retained by about 10% to 20%. Now, imagine all your efforts to create a training program going down the drain?!
To prevent classes from being forgotten, apply everything that was taught the previous week in a dynamic way. The goal here is to force the brain to recall those memories. According to the theory, just over five minutes is enough to retain about 90% of what was taught.
Thirty days later
It may seem like an exaggeration, but believe me, it is necessary to review the training one month after its implementation. At this stage, the objective is to give cadence to the review and keep the content already fixed alive.