We’re creating a whole new engagement model for learning and teaching, making training more effective, convenient, and enjoyable for both learners and the teachers in the workplace that need to teach quickly.
Learning without knowing you’re doing it. Creating associations through storytelling of real on-the-job situations that an entry level person would likely face, allowing them to use the information to arrive at the conclusion in the narrative.
This is important and here is what goes into it.We use this for some of the important and hard stuff, where the “devil is in the details”. Too much stimulation or entertainment could distract from the complex associations provided carefully in the message itself. These segments are short and included again in the summary.
First and last items in a sequence are most likely to be remembered. For this reason we put the two most important parts, “why you need to know this and what could go wrong if you don’t” at the beginning and the “summary of actionable steps” at the end.
Association between arousal and cognitive participation, until the point of exhaustion is reached. We purposefully time our segments to stop before exhaustion and to trigger arousal and excitement to correlate with important, complex ideas in the middle of a segment, where serial-position falls short.
By having memorable relatable examples that stand out. This gives content in the middle the highest chance of being remembered in the sequence.
From the day humans are born they start associating sounds with events, with at least basic memories of positive or negative reinforcement of their actions or a feeling of safety or the need to flee. Auditory sensory signals and olfactory (smell) sensory signals are two of the strongest associated memories of all of the senses, but auditory information tends to have strong ties to culture and experiences and the message being delivered, while having that strong associative capability that helps the message “stick” in one’s memory.
Millennials and Gen Z listen to music more than other generation. Conveniently, a large majority of modern audio content has similar themes and motifs that stimulate similar feelings and messages (positive/negative reinforcement, comfort/danger, etc). Great composers, producers, and audio engineers purposefully construct their pieces to move their audiences based on these associations, which are relatively linear among people within a culture and an environment. By creating themes and motifs reminiscent of modern media and placing them strategically before, during, and after segments of which different calls to action are desired, we can use previous associations to coach someone to “do something” or “don’t do something” while remembering it.
Consider the common ability to remember word-for-word lyrics of songs and the strong associations with the messages of the songs when a song is enjoyed.
Consider the memory of a scary scene in a movie. If you take the music and auditory cues out, it’ll hardly be scary or memorable. Put back in the auditory cues and music and you’ll remember it forever.
Consider the energy and pulse of an EDM electronic dance music song at 120 or 140 bpm. Songs at this tempo have a familiar cadence, that unlike melodic scales that differ, is prevalent across many regions and cultures. This has been of interest to researchers and there are theories that this tempo is gravitated towards because the heart rate of an infant in the mother’s womb is in that range (120-160bpm) as well as the heart rate of an adult while participating in moderate exercise like running or dancing. Composers, producers, and audio engineers use this association to their advantage.
Perfect practice makes perfect. The more times a learned skill is practiced in a neutral environment, the more closely what was learned will be applied with higher accuracy and confidence when doing it live. You don’t start playing a championship game in sports without honing your skills and practicing the plays first. Why should work be any different?
Having the ability to practice and learn in a structured way is much more effective than what’s seen in the typical modern workplace where there is no emphasis on practice, but rather a “fake it till you make it” mentality that can lead to costly mistakes.
