5 Tricks to help learners better remember training courses

People naturally forget. While there are plenty of factors that influence a person's ability to pay attention to new information — getting a good night's sleep, doing regular physical exercise, having a balanced diet or doing brain games — training instructors have no control over them.

However, there are some tricks that can be used when creating training courses that respond to the needs of learners and stimulate their memory.

1. Apply spaced repetition

   You should sprinkle the same idea in various parts of each training course. You can even go a step further and do the same for each main idea in each lesson or chapter. But most importantly, make sure to repeat the same piece of information over time.

   When learners encounter the same piece of information over and over in their learning materials, they'll have increased chances to later remember what they learn.

2. Use mnemonics

   Mnemonics are memory devices that help learners recall larger pieces of information. The best examples of mnemonics are acronyms, acrostics, chunking or imagery association.

   The professional world and training courses offer plenty of opportunities to include mnemonics in learning materials. Even color coding the chapters in learning materials can help employees have better retention rates.

3. Add music

   Music and rhymes are proven to help memory retention. When designing training courses, you can include wordplay and sounds in each lesson: a rhyme here, a song there, and even background music can help.

   When learners are regularly exposed to music and sound patterns they can send the new information they learn in their long-term memory much faster.

4. Encourage social collaboration

   Learners should be able to ask questions freely, answer those of others by explaining and presenting what they know, and work together to find solutions. Whether they do this face-to-face or through web collaboration tools, getting answers is what matters most.

   When people receive instant feedback for their learning queries, they'll better absorb and later remember the new information.

5. Let learners experience Aha! moments

   When learners find something interesting, they'll want to know more about it. And when they are determined to find more information on what interests them, they'll have more Aha! moments and they'll better retain what they learn.

   That's why instructors should provide extra learning resources for all learners to explore each topic as in depth as they want.

Resources

• 7 Tricks to Improve Your Memory
• The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve – And How To Overcome It
• 9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory
• Examples of Mnemonics
• Why Music Helps You Memorize Items
• Learning and Remembering with Others : The Key Role of Retrieval in Shaping Group Recall and Collective Memory

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