McDaniel. The authors are distinguished psychology professors,
and together they’ve created a useful summary of the best
strategies and tactics we have to help people learn. The first major
tactic they share is harnessing the impact of information retrieval.
They put it beautifully: “What’s essential is to interrupt the
process of forgetting.” That forgetting starts happening
immediately, so even by asking the question at the end of a
conversation, you’ve created the first interruption in that slide
towards “I’ve never heard that before!”
And if you want to up the ante, you can find a way for this
question to pop up in places other than the end of a conversation.
The authors say, “Reflection is a form of practice”; create these
moments and you find a place for Dan Coyle’s Deep Practice. One
option is to ask the question at the start of the team meeting or the
regularly scheduled one-on-one. “What have you learned since we
last met?” One of the disciplines I (mostly) follow at the end of my
day is using an app called iDoneThis, and rather than just writing
out what I did, I write down a sentence or two about what I
learned and what I’m most proud of.
Why “What Was Most Useful for You?” Tops the List
There are a number of questions you could ask to help drive this
generative and retrieval process to embed the learning. “What did
you learn?” “What was the key insight?” “What do you want to
remember?” and “What’s important to capture?” are some of the