Ebbinghaus or the Curves on why we just keep forgetting

Recently I came across the Ebbinghaus Curve aka the Forgetting Curve - interesting because my boss oftens laments  about how people can be trained in an improved SOP or new process, and then after a year or so they seem to have forgotten, and there is a risk of quality issues.

And to be honest, if someone catalogs a complex list of instructions on how to drive to a distant location, I find it often just doesn't gel with me. I much prefer simple written instructions, with the added visual component of a street directory. So far I haven't done much with GPS systems either to be honest.

So I've been intrigued by Nick Milton of Knoco Stories, who for years has been running a training program called the Bird Island Exercise, which is all about remembering & forgetting. Recently I re-discovered one of Nick's posts on his Bird Island Exercise from a year ago - where he shared the following insights :

"This result reinforces recognition of the frailty of human memory as a long term knowledge store, and therefore the need to support that memory through some sort of capturing and recording. Even 6 months is too long to leave knowledge in memory alone. We need to be capturing it as we go, even as an aide memoire, otherwise we lose it.


And when we come to use it again, we find we retain just enough to be dangerous."

Nick Milton also shared more on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in his The Gorilla Illusions post - by the way have you ever heard of the Invisible Gorilla Experiment ?

I also liked Nick's post on The Self Aware Organisation - it seems to resonate with many of the concepts in Professor James Reason's High Performance Organizations.

And around the same time of Nick's Remembering & Forgetting post, Harold Jarche also shared his thoughts on Ebbinghaus & the Forgetting Curve - Learning & Forgetting - on how much we remember after training & memorisation - and how quickly we can lose it.

Professor James Reason has also had some interesting thoughts on Human Errors - which seem to accord with the Forgetting Curve as shared in my organization's OHS awareness sessions. 

Some of these ideas are also echoed in a preso by ACTKM's David Williams "How do you get people to read and understand stuff?" - it's on Slideshare - which holds some very interesting preso's on Knowledge Management which are freely  available for download. David's thoughts are salient when one considers the increasing volume, length & complexity of SOP's - Standards Operating Procedures - as they try to cover every possible scenario. 


Then Benedict Carey (NYT) reviewed ideas that turn traditional thought on studying, learning & retention on its head.


I have to review my organization's procedure for writing standard procedures - so there could be some good inspiration in there, for what is arguably quite a dry subject, but nonetheless very crucial. 


I've always liked the Gunning Fog approach to understandability of one's writing - some find it too geeky with its equation for simplicity/complexity of writing.

I find it interesting because of the strong focus on Corporate "Storytelling" in Knowledge Management circles in Australia in recent years as opposed to CMS - Content Management Systems.  In fact CMS can really support SME's (Subject Matter Experts) to effectively manage their  PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) systems - for more effective recall & Knowledge Sharing, and so to share via tools such as Corporate "Storytelling". My organization's SSO's (Significant Safety Occurrence shared stories & learnings) are in fact a good example of embedded Corporate Storytelling in my opinion.

See my Diigo Shared Bookmarks & Google Reader RSS feed items for more Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve links.

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70-20-10 Learning - an Aussie ASQ Global Influential Voice for Quality Shares on Making a Difference

Lifelong Learning & 70:20:10 rule of learning = Informal on the Job:Coaching:Formal Classroom Llessons  ? Making a Difference Globally ?

I am a great fan of Harold Jarche & John Tropea with their strong focus on informal learning including the 70-20-10 rule of learning. Likewise I am a strong proponent of Quality in our daily lives, and so was intrigued by ASQ's head Paul Borawski's recent post "Quality Tools and Education : Making a Difference on a Global Scale."

Of course, learning & knowledge management are key components of continual improvement in Resource Management in Quality - as reflected in even the previous edition of ISO 9004. In our world Education is not just what you do at school, college or university - we have to keep re-learning in such a rapidly changing world. And we need confidence in the quality of the resources we use, as we continually learn & re-learn.

Nearly 10 years ago I encountered the Learning Cities & Communities movement - centred around Lifelong Learning - a key to resilience of communities in change and adversity. The initiative was largely appropriated by the Community College movement aka Adult Education Associations in Australia. Yet I always believed that it couldn't be monopolised by this sector alone - not everyone is in a position to attend formal face to face classroom lessons.

In Sydney, Australia we had an insightful article by Louise Williams in this weekend's edition of our local Sydney Morning Herald "The Slow Collapse of the Ivory Tower". Ms Williams wrote of how learning is changing from face to face classrooms in an internet world and how this threatens the traditional university or college monopoly on higher learning. She also spoke of how increasing numbers of students are not attending lectures, choosing to source their required information in alternative ways. Curious as I had observed lecturers at my local uni lamenting the same when I attended a prize giving event last November.

And yet it's not new - when I served for 12 years on the Governing Council of the University of Wollongong (located south of Sydney), I found that UOW was already moving into on-line blended E-learning years ago. However there are advantages of face to face learning - the serendipity & synergy of bouncing ideas off each other.

Likewise there are emerging challenges to the traditional "peer reviewed paper" in an academic journal on which academics' ranking is based - enabling them to compete for research funding & attract students. I recall attending a conference across the other side of Australia about 5 years ago, where attendees were denied timely access to copies of the conference papers because the organisers wanted to publish them to increase the rankings of academics who had presented at the conference. It was "all driven by the rankings cycle" as I subsequently found out - and I finally received the conference papers 9 months after the conference! The freshness and impact of the presenters' work in my mind was lost - I'd wanted to share new insights with my professional colleagues - but all I had were my scribbled handwritten notes.

No wonder that with this time delay paradigm, the proliferation and the increasing cost of academic journals, that the peer reviewed paper model is now being seriously challenged by the immediacy of online collaboration. And yet we need to ensure that there is confidence in the quality of online E-learning & web posts. It is also important that "Digital Native" students can discriminate between accurate & erroneous information in a web based & increasingly social media dominated world.

Not to mention the tipping point as we see the rapidly disappearing print book market and the exploding E-book market - with its flow-on impact on Public & Academic Librarians. Librarians are recognising that they must participate in the debate around these changes rather than take the high moral ground and shun it. At a Library Conference in Brisbane Australia last year, one presenter spoke of the advantages of E-Readers for students in the Pacific Islands where high humidity can destroy the traditional printed book based library collections.

Unfortunately some Baby Boomer Managers are still dismissive of Web 2.0 and Social Media tools in Technology & Quality worlds. Yet ISO, the OECD & WTO, for instance, have embraced social media approaches (eg Youtube, Facebook & Twitter)  in trying to reach a wider global audience. Admittedly, it can seem haphazard sometimes especially with social media tools like Paper.li Dailies (eg mine-KerrieAnne paper.li).

However as a Baby Boomer techo manager, I've had to reinvent myself several times over the last 5 years - 1st as a Quality Manager and then during the GFC with a zero training budget, to become an International Trade backroom boffin -  specialising in how standards & conformity apply in Technical (Non Tariff) Barriers to Trade (TBT's). I've used tools like Sharepoint's Wiki to capture my evolving WTO TBT knowledge, sharing it both locally and globally across my organization - to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

So it is great to see how organizations like ASQ are embracing online E-learning & social media tools to address the 70:20:10 approaches to learning. ASQ is bringing a quality approach to these new technologies - setting a standard on how they can be applied for younger and older "students" alike - regardless of whether they are formally enrolled in courses or learning informally. As an Australian based member of ASQ, and one of its International Global Influential Voices for Quality, I am sharing & learning from my fellow Global Influential Voices - a fantastic initiative.

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 (Please note I do receive a variety of quality resources as an honorarium in exchange for my commitment to the ASQ Global Influential Voices for Quality program. However the thoughts & opinions that I express here in my blog are my own!).

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