may be doomed to lose the information. Here are some ways that professors can help their students to remember what they are learning:
- Peer-to-peer explanations: Professors can invite their students to explain what they have learned, giving an opportunity for them to reactivate their knowledge, strengthen it in their minds, and increase overall retention
- Regular practice tests: Instead of reviewing material over and over, frequent testing gives aid to long-term information retention and helps students to manage their exam performance. Many students panic in exam situations because they are not well versed in the setup, which impairs their memory recall and may convince them that they are not effective at retaining learning concepts. Tests do not need to be graded, but they do need to go through the core study material on a frequent basis
- Spacing: Teachers may want to consider introducing recaps of material studied weeks or even months ago, giving students the chance to review their learnings in a casual way. This same methodology applies to homework - why not give homework based on a topic taught a month ago? That will show if they really learned it and will work the brain to not forget it
Experiential Learning Through Business Simulations
Business simulations are gamified experiential learning activities that place students in certain business roles that teach them about key industry concepts, business functions, how departments work together, and more. Every role in a business simulation is important to its overall success, and through the running of a virtual company, virtual product launch, or another simulation scenario, students will be offered a mixture of passive and active learning opportunities.
Our research has found that students learn better when they are challenged and motivated, which is why the simulations are so conducive to learning retention. Participants are invited to receive and digest information, make informed choices, and reflect on the impacts of their decisions, much like most board and video games. When simulations are fun, competitive, and gamified in nature, these elements combine to make a somewhat unforgettable experiential learning activity.
Simulation Repetition is Key
Simulations and their learning objectives are best retained when the exercise is repeated many times. Science suggests that learners retain about 5% of what they hear, but around 50% of what they gain through interaction and experience. Experience is sticky, heard concepts are slippery.
The repetition of business simulations enables the learnings to get embedded deeper in the human memory, perhaps, as we explained in the introduction, by tricking the brain into seeing the information as being key to survival. At least in the modern day, when survival is assured by maintaining a good shelter and keeping on top of your bills, remembering what you’ve learned in a business simulation could prove incredible useful!
"Since students take on management roles in a fictitious company, they need to make strategic decisions to grow their business, applying theoretical business concepts in a practical way. Since they see the outcomes of their decisions, they are able to retain learning more effectively than just through theory alone” - StratX Simulations
Multi-Visual Memory Strategies
One of the most proven and effective methods to get students to retain learning concepts is by applying a creative mixture of text, video, images, sound, humor, podcasts, and more.
One of the most simple forms of visual learning is the flashcard. A picture and a word combined, or a picture on one side and a word on the other. The humble flashcard has been effective for decades, as the combination of two forms of the same information helps our brains to remember information.
A list of countries is hard to remember, but when formatted into a map, it’s much more memorable. Telling someone the weather forecast for tomorrow is far less effective than them watching a weather forecast on television, thanks to the audio-visual representations, color codes, k