Tell Me First or Last “ I’ll Remember it Better

I ran across this interesting post the other day: Start and End eLearning Courses with Methods That Facilitate Learning (Integrated Learning Services)

Shelley discusses that learners tend to remember the content presented first and last better than everything in the middle. (She refers to the Primacy and Recency Effects.) Now, when I first read the post it seemed like common sense. We just don’t have enough short-term capacity to remember all of it. However the point of the post is more around, “Since this is how the mind works, how are we changing the way we create training?”

Do you strategically place content in your course based on if it’s closer to the beginning or ending? Maybe we should think about it a bit more.

What if the course starts with a bullet list of learning objects? What if the course ends with a text page that says, “In this module you learned…”? Do these play to the strengths of the Primacy or Recency Effects?

Here are a few ideas to “space out” training so that it’s more effective. (Kineo)

I guess we need to add this idea to our “design flow” to make sure we don’t forget to consider while designing courses in the future.

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