Stephen Downes had a post a week ago that described the mistakes of elearning development. While ignoring the main parts of the post and focusing on the first graph, one thing struck me. This is exactly how any learning process that one undertakes would go. Up to a certain point, there can be some standard type of learning happening. After a while, that starts to level off and unless it is applied in some manner (or interacted with in some meaningful – or passionate – manner), it is forgotten pretty quick. Writing this in the tail end of exams, it’s certainly easy to be reminded of the fact that over the next ten days, a good percentage of whatever was “learned” will be forgotten, even if the next course requires elements of what was learned. Why? It would seem to me that the next course is focused on the same type of learning that the last one was so you may only achieve incrementally more “learning” than the last go around (and because you are up higher, you crash further in the forgetting).
Learning by doing seems to be the path that this curve suggests. I know that in my courses, I had students to some background research, then apply that research right away in some practical or authentic manner and then reflect. It seemed to work and the students all enjoyed it. If you look at the second, more complex curve, you’ll see that the forgetting and the learning can bomb or take off at any time. This should be considered when looking at how instruction, application and assessment is sequenced.
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