Forget About ‘The Forgetting Curve’​

Transformational change defines 21st-century living. This change is NOT ONLY prevalent in business and technology—it touches every part of our lives and especially our learning. How people learn is currently experiencing a 21st-century revolution in a fast-paced world where ‘routine’ experts are being replaced by robots (e.g., Amazon, Boeing, et. al.), and ‘adaptive’ experts are key to progressive mindsets. Adaptive people learn in a different way—a way that includes deep understanding for application in the real world. This kind of adaptive engagement in any workplace ensures a fulfilled, secure, and upwardly mobile employee.

Most people are not aware of this learning revolution!

If you are presenting any information to a new audience, you are probably doing so in the same model that has been used for two or three generations. In other words, we each have been educated (teaching, selling, managing, training, parenting) in the exact same way for more than 100 years. The ‘same way’ looks like this:

Say/Show/Teach/Present your content

1) Test your learners (Memory Recall)

2) Grade your learners (Label/Stratify)

3) Manage retention loss (Wonder why learners don’t retain much)

Look familiar? It’s how we all learned, so it’s no wonder why you use it today.

Education, in all its forms, is the only profession where those who educate are almost totally unaware of the primary tool they use in learning; the Brain.

Call your class/course/pitch what you want, but at the end of the day, no matter what you do, you know that 80% of what you presented will be forgotten. That ‘fact’ is ubiquitous: it was established by Ebbinghaus in 1885 and has been robustly confirmed ever since. Ebbinghaus’ infamous ‘forgetting curve’ describes a progressive decrease in knowledge retention with elapsed time since learning.

That was 1885. This is the 21st century. Knowledge has changed and you need to take heed.

Advances in neuroscience and learning sciences have led to the field of Cognitive Learning Sciences. In June 2019, at Columbia University’s historic Teacher’s College, Cognitive Learning Neuroscientist Dr. Kieran O’Mahony presented empirical research on why you can now forget about ‘The Forgetting Curve’. https://youtu.be/R_kN6AFadc8

This transformational change for learning is the result of O’Mahony’s Brain-centric Design (BcD) research and the surprising neuroscience behind learning with deep understanding. In short, BcD is a cognitive model that presents information the way your brain accepts it, and consequently delivers information the way people love to learn.

This is nothing like how you learned in school.

ICELW 2019, NY attendees embracing Brain-centric Design, The Surprising Neuroscience Behind Deep Understanding, O’Mahony presented Brain-centric Design’s exceptional results to 50 of the world’s top educators and scientists at the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW 2019, NY). In a surprising twist, Dr. O’ was asked to deliver an encore presentation for individuals who were not able to attend the inaugural lecture.

Later that same day, as the buzz of his findings and the magnitude of its effects settled on the gathering, the key takeaways from Brain-centric Design’s model delivered the following:

  • Learners retain ~100% of what is presented, the outcome of Long Term Potentiation (LTP)
  • Every learner participates, collaborates, and co-creates in a safe learning environment
  • Every learner acquires agency of their learning
  • Content delivery time reduced 40-50%

Remember Everything

Educators and Learners are drawn intuitively to this new learning paradigm and go deep when they realize the potential. It strips away how we’ve been taught in the past, replacing it with how we love to learn, naturally. Brain-centric Design’s model is agnostic of race, gender, age, culture, and subject matter.

If you have a brain, you are in the BcD world, and it works 100%.

“If you’re not presenting your information to the brain, what are you presenting it to?” asked O’Mahony to the international gathering of educators. “The brain’s potential is limitless if made to feel secure… the learner accesses the immediate benefits of this environment by focusing on, accepting, and making sense of the new information presented.” A BcD course is so different and so engaging, it takes only a single experience in the model to experience, own, and adopt the new paradigm.

BcD’s surprising neuroscience behind learning with deep understanding delivers several seminal results for your audience. First, immersion in the pedagogic model transforms each learner into an ‘adaptive expert’ mindset. Second, facilitators come to understand that classroom management issues decrease at the same time that learner agency and engagement increase.

For this reason, BcD is in heavy demand by Fortune 100 business units (including Talent Development, Human Resources, Learning/Training & Development) and from sales presentations to parent/child communication. Any presentation of new information to any audience can be presented how the brain accepts it, and how people love to learn.

As transformational change accelerates, measurement outcomes of this 21st-century learning model continue to grow and are irrefutable. Brain-centric Design is not clever… it is science; its impact on humankind is reliable, reproducible, and imminently universal.

Adaptive Vs. Routine Experts: Do You Know The Difference?

Does your team struggle when a new concept or technique is introduced, or do they use it to their advantage? Is change in the organization a stumbling block, or an opportunity?  More than just being business-led, and no matter if the management model is loose or controlled, the strongest determinant of your success is whether your team has adaptive expertise or routine expertise.

What’s the Difference?

A routine expert can master procedures in order to become highly efficient and accurate (but not flexible or adaptable in situations that are outside the routine). People who are routine experts can accelerate efficiency through well-practiced routines.

An adaptive expert is a broad construct that encompasses a range of cognitive, motivational, and personality-related components, as well as habits of mind and dispositions. Generally, problem-solvers demonstrate adaptive expertise when they are able to efficiently solve previously encountered tasks and generate new procedures for new tasks. Requires an individual to develop conceptual understanding that allows the “expert” to invent new solutions to problems and even new procedures for solving problems.

To illustrate, imagine two sushi chefs. One makes every piece perfectly, crafting the same few rolls over and over (routine, or classic, expertise). The other is inventive, producing new menus frequently (adaptive expertise). While the first chef can craft an incredible Tuna roll, they will struggle when they run out of the right ingredients. How does one make a California roll without cucumber or avocado? The second chef is used to thinking on their feet. An adaptive expert understands why cucumber and avocado is used in the first place, and therefore has a better chance of finding a substitute.

To some, this is an unfair comparison, as ones’ environment supports behavior. For example, the routine of the classic expert sushi chef may be tied to his restaurant environment, and this chef may be able to break out of the routines easily given a different situation.

Actually, that argument is exactly correct. You see, the organization that employs both chef’s has some control over how well each person understands their craft.

That means that you have the power and opportunity to foster a work culture of adaptive expertise.  

Why It’s Difficult to Foster Adaptive Expertise

People are taught to have routine expertise thanks to our school systems, learning & development departments, and instructional designers. 

As a result, most of us aren’t learning any faster than someone who lived 100 years ago. While you can recite information as quickly as your wireless connection allows, you aren’t retaining any more knowledge than people were at the start of the tech revolution.

Presentations haven’t gotten any better.  Many would argue they are a million times worse (think Death By PowerPoint).  In many respects, all technology has allowed us to do is move the bullet point list from the chalkboard to the smart board.

Use BcD to Create Adaptive Expertise

Brain-centric Design is the surprising neuroscience behind learning for deep understanding.  To “BcD” a presentation, is to align your material the way the brain will accept that information.  You want the learners, your audience, to understand and benefit from your knowledge by making it their information.  This is made possible through the cognitive approach to learning, or the way you learned before school.

Luckily for you, there is a recipe for cognitive learning. Or, as our Cognitive Learning Scientist Dr. Kieran O’Mahony calls it, a “pedagogic model.”

Presenting your information to your learners using the Brain-centric Design pedagogic model produces deep understanding in the learner.  This understanding enables adaptive expertise.  It is that simple.

Instructional Design For Marketing

Your sales team is much bigger than you think.

Much, much bigger.

Every single customer that purchases your product, learns how to use it, and correctly applies it to their particular situation, is now a brand advocate. Free of charge, from this point forward. The customer that understands your product—how it works, what particular benefits it creates, and the kind of buyer it’s for—will continue to share their experience with your product.

Of course, that’s only true if you attract the right customer (the one who can profit from your product) and if they leave the buying experience with the knowledge required to use that product correctly.

That’s why it’s critical that you and your entire team are skilled at imparting knowledge about the nature of your business to each and every one of your customers every chance you get.

The Brain-centric Design team excels at wrapping your product into a message that answers one particular question: “Why?” We know your customer needs to leave the interaction knowing why they are going to choose your company over something else.

Would the company be able to achieve this, if they’ve become modest about what they’re doing and decided not to inform their customers? Chances are, no. This is one way of making knowledge work for you.

We understand the power of answering why. Subway is arguably the pioneer of fast food sandwiches. When their first West Coast shop opened in Fresno in 1978, Subway dominated the sandwich market. However, as fast food gained in popularity, the team had to create a marketing solution that would elevate Subway above fast food giants like McDonald’s and Burger King.

Enter Jared Fogle to the scene. He claimed to have lost 200 pounds by eating subway sandwiches. The why? Subway will help you lose weight. Subway attributes between one-third and one-half of its growth from 1998 to 2011 to the campaign.

Would the company have achieved this if they decided not to inform their customers? Chances are, no.

This is one way of making knowledge work for you.

The Brain-centric Design team specializes in social psychology and adult learning techniques. So do our on-staff trained instructional designers. We are excited to develop your marketing campaign into a learning experience that underlines your customers’ reasons for coming back.

There are many benefits to helping your buyer get to know your why. Not only will they learn more about the role your company, services, and goods play, but they will also see you as a person who is eager to help them achieve their goals. Acts like these are what place your company above the rest.