It’s interesting how some people you know have the most remarkable memory. But how are they able to retain so much information and recall with ease? It is a focus of ours at Wranx to improve knowledge retention, through the innovative method of Spaced Repetition. However, we have developed it further and made Spaced Repetition on our platform personalised.

What actually is Spaced Repetition? It’s a scientifically proven learning method and the backbone to Wranx. It is the ‘effective’ in the ‘Effective, Measurable Learning’ we offer. When learning new information, it is thought that testing of that information should be carried out at specific intervals of time to improve knowledge retention. It is Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve that inspired this, as he found that the notorious ‘cramming’ method proved to have little benefit to the learner, resulting in low knowledge retention.

So, how do we know Spaced Repetition is effective? A study by Karpicke & Bauernschmidt was carried out in 2011, where participants were required to learn a list of Swahili words, (e.g., words like “mashua — boat”) and recall. They completed this in various conditions, such as studying the words once without trying to recall, or once the words were retrieved they were ‘dropped’ from their learning lists and not seen again. The last condition practiced retrieving the words three times, but the repeated retrievals were spaced throughout the learning session.

So, there’s science behind Spaced Repetition and it’s a proven method. But how do Wranx utilise it? When new questions in a drill appear, Wranx also displays the answer. However, it is the User’s responsibility to select how well they knew this information by selecting one of 6 options:

• ‘I knew It’
• ‘I hesitated at first’
• ‘I really had to think’
• ‘I should have known’
• ‘I understand now’
• ‘I didn’t know it’

Wranx’s unique algorithm then works to schedule the question for another point in time. Users who ‘Knew It’ won’t see the question again for 7 days, whereas users who may have ‘Failed it’ will see the question sooner. This is how we’ve made Spaced Repetition personalised, as everyone learns at different paces. We make sure questions are repeated sooner to the users who need extra support in retaining knowledge, creating a bespoke user experience. It is unrealistic for corporate business’ to expect their learners to retain large amounts of information; everyone’s learning journey is individual after all!

We are confident in our platform as we have seen positive results with our clients such as Xerox. They found that the employees who used Wranx scored 16% higher in training than those who didn’t. Not only did the employees have increased interest in their training, but the improvement of how they dealt with customer issues was apparent. It is clear that our platform is successful at delivering effective and impactful training. The unique method of personalised Spaced Repetition and our ability to create bespoke content for a range topics such as customer service, onboarding, health and safety or compliance further develops employee learning, meaning good things for your organisation’s performance!

References:

Karpicke, Jeffrey D. (2016). A Powerful Way to Improve Learning and Memory.American Psychological Association, Psychological Science Agenda.

Training Industry, (2014). The 70:20:10 Model for Learning and Development. Found online at: https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/the-702010-model-for-learning-and-development/