Re-Learning…

Another blog from our guest blogger, Ant Pugh. In this post, he explains the importance of repeated messaging throughout an elearning course.


So, it’s a pretty standard Christmas gift for a dad who already has everything, but enjoys reading isn’t it? Yes of course, a Kindle.

But despite being his personal 21st Century technological advisor, and owning or having played with most of the gadgets out there myself, I was still jealous. “Your father read 7 books last week on holiday on his new Kindle” my mother would tell me. And of course I read. But the fact that he was consuming this much information whilst sitting in his sun lounger in the garden was too much.. I had battled with the glare off my iPad screen for too long. Lying with a towel over my head, turning the screen brightness down, even wearing Polarized sunglasses – none of them worked. I needed a Kindle.

And so my other half duly obliged when birthday time came around. And I was now the owner of a brand new Kindle Paperwhite. I quickly downloaded all my books and was well away. My New Years resolution for 2013 was a book a month… And by the end of March I was already 8 books to the good.

But what has quickly become apparent, through having all my books/blogs/magazine articles etc. handy on one device, is how useful it has been to re-read a book/blog/article – or sections of books etc., at any given moment. (As I’m sure you’re aware, you can highlight sections of Kindle text for quick, convenient future reference).

And this action of being able to reread sections of books has been so powerful. Before my last meeting with a subject-matter expert, I was able to quickly revisit the topic of how important it is to listen empathetically with a reminder from a chapter of Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People. “Re-reading is the most effective type of reading, because it offers readers the opportunity to re-think messages and see features they have not noticed in initial reading.” (Yep, I had highlighted that on my new toy). Not only does having quick access to content provide me with a useful for tool for remembering certain pieces of information, but the process of re-reading really helps the information ‘stick’.

And this has led me onto thinking more deeply about how these concepts can be applied to eLearning – the importance of helping our learners “re-read”. More specifically, let’s ensure as ID’s, we are repeating key messages throughout our eLearning content, to help ensure these ideas and concepts sink in. Once we have finished the design phase, let’s ask ourselves the question:

  • How many times is the critical message repeated throughout the elearning module? (or maybe the top 5 critical messages)

Has anyone else any thoughts on this subject? I would love to hear from you…