Knowledge Factor Blog Continuous Learning - The Importance of Knowledge Refresh

"The only irreplaceable capital an organization possesses is the knowledge and ability of its people."- Andrew Carnegie This notion is as true today as it was a hundred years ago. Employee knowledge is critical to organizational success, but nurturing and maintaining this asset can be difficult. For example, according to a study from Xerox, 87% of new skills are lost within a month of training. This statistics is representative of the poor results produced by many of the most popular learning technologies and methodologies on the market today. One driver of these less-than-stellar outcomes is their "one-off" approach to learning wherein, after a learning program is completed, a learner moves on with little to no performance analysis, additional remediation, coaching or review. Research from the cognitive sciences shows that one-off learning is an incredibly poor methodology for long-term retention and recall. The brain needs additional exposure to learning content over time before the information can be strongly encoded and stored in memory. One learning event is simply not enough, rather, learners need steady content refreshers at key intervals to best absorb and retain new learning.Traditionally, this type of continuous learning has been onerous, expensive and, in most instances, down-right impossible to execute. However, dramatic advances in technology and a greater scientific understanding of how the brain acquires, retains and recalls information, has recently enabled a new set of algorithmically-driven, continuous learning technologies that make continuous learning effective and economical. Want to learn more? Click here to see an example of continual learning in action or read about amplifire's new "refresher" feature that kick starts continuous learning with additional remediation and review.