Techniques for Retention: How to Retain What You Learn

Education is a timeless resource. There will never be a time in human history when people don’t need to learn anything. However, an education is only effective if people can retain information.

The key to learning is to be able to remember and apply your study: whether that’s arts, sciences, or online EdD programs, everything you learn will demand a certain amount of space in your brain, like a biological hard drive.

Today, we’re going to go through some time-tested methods of improving your ability to absorb, retain, and recall the things you’ve learned.

Spaced Learning

In education, there’s a concept called rote learning. It simply means to learn by repetition and involves repeating learned information until it is committed to memory. While it may sound effective, it has some flaws.

While it involves repetition, the lack of mental space and tediousness of the task mean that learning by rote often fails to commit the subject matter to memory, due to the learner disengaging with the content they’re attempting to learn.

This is where Space Learning comes in. Much like rote learning, it’s a method of learning by repetition. However, it grants the learner break times and mental clarity. The method involves learning a lesson, then the next day moving on to the next lesson, then going over a summary of the content of the lesson before. This methodology continues until all information is committed to memory, and can be done in 15-30 minute blocks.

Blended Learning

Blended learning is the process of using multiple sources of information, both theoretical and practical, to drive home the content you’re learning through active engagement and interest. This can include traditional classrooms, online and offline content, experiments, demonstrations, videos, and more. It allows better retention by people with different memory aptitudes and assists people in engaging with course content.

Microlearning

How often per day do you spend scrolling on your phone? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? An hour? Imagine if every day you were swapping that time for learning.

Microlearning is the process of breaking down segments of your desired topic into tiny modules that can be learned and absorbed quickly and easily. Usually lasting about 10 minutes, these modules can produce great results when used consistently

. It is far easier and more accessible to take in a 10 minute video or lesson, than a 1 hour lecture. Perhaps most importantly, it’s easier to repeat these modules because they are so short, lending them well to repeated learning methods such as spaced learning.

Video Learning

Taking advantage of the deeply online social zeitgeist we find ourselves in, the process of video learning is quite simple. It involves using video tutorials or educational content to get a lesson across.

This method of learning is incredibly prolific these days, as not only does YouTube contain a tutorial for just about everything, but many universities and other educational institutions are offering their courses online as video lessons.

Combining the benefits of lecturing and blended learning, video learning is useful because it provides audio-visual stimulation, and its use of images or animations can assist in retention.

Application

Once you’ve learned something, a good strategy for retaining it is simply to do it.

Most of the time, we’re not just learning because learning is fun; we’re learning because there’s a goal or outcome that we’re looking for. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Once you’ve learned how to do something, you should try to have a go at it yourself as soon as possible, while the knowledge is still fresh in your mind.

If the subject you’ve been studying is a dangerous one, make sure you have a qualified individual with you while you’re working on your practical skills. Applying knowledge to real life works because it helps to put theoretical knowledge into a physical concept, and soon we begin to associate the knowledge with the minutiae of the task itself.

Teaching

Conversely, teaching others is a great way to improve your retention abilities. This is for one major reason. When we teach someone something, we are essentially taking responsibility for its accuracy. There is a certain onus on the teacher to deliver accurate and effective ideas and information to the audience.

When you’re studying a topic, try to get an understanding of it to the point where you think, “Yes, I think I could explain this to someone.” If you can successfully help someone else understand the topic you’re studying, it will mean you’ve developed an instinctual understanding of it. If you fall flat, areas that need improvement will be revealed to you.

A popular way of practising this method is by teaching an object, like a piece of fruit, for example, or a soft toy. This removes any sense of pressure or stage fright that may come from practising this method of retention improvement.