Maximize Your Training Results with One Powerful Question

I’ve spent 30 years in the Learning & Development field, sharing science-inspired practical wisdom with my clients, and the same questions often come up over and over again. One of the most common is, “What one thing should we do to improve our training?” And, a related question: “What’s the biggest mistake that learning teams make in designing learning programs?”

The answer I give to both of these questions is based on the same key insight. The biggest mistake we make in L&D is trying to teach too much content. The most important thing we can do to improve our learning is replace some of that content with activities that support learning—but we must choose the right activities, those that maximize learning.

In this article, I will explore why too much content is a problem and share a list of the most important design ideas for getting the most out of our training efforts. I will also share some ideas for how to convince your stakeholders—including your subject-matter experts—why too much content is harmful.

What’s wrong with lots of content?

Human beings are not computers. When we learn, we don’t absorb 100% of the stimuli we encounter. To get information into our long-term memories, we must pay attention—and pay attention in a way that supports comprehension. When content is broadcast to us in wave after wave, we don’t have time to fully process every wave of information. We get tired and our attention wanes. We miscomprehend. We get bored. Our eyes glaze over. Sometimes, we give up and shut down our learning efforts.

It gets worse. What I have described so far is faulty comprehension due to problems in paying attention to waves of content. But attention and comprehension are just the minimal thresholds for learning. We also need to ensure that learned information can be remembered. Having people comprehend is necessary, but it is not sufficient to support remembering. To support remembering, people who are learning must process information in certain ways—in ways that cannot even be attempted if we keep pelting the learner with new information to comprehend.

Here’s a thought experiment. What training would you recommend?

• Teach 50 things and have people comprehend 20 and remember 5
• Teach 20 things and have people comprehend 20 and remember 10

The second option results in twice as much remembering—the clear winner. By focusing on 20 concepts instead of 50, we have time to provide the learning supports that enable comprehension and remembering. No learning program will be perfect in supporting comprehension and remembering, but we can minimize learning failures by avoiding content overload.

But what if all of our content is essential?

“But wait, Dr. Thalheimer! I have 50 pieces of critical information that my learners need to know!” This is a common refrain. Here’s what I’m inclined to say—hopefully removing any vestiges of snark from my voice. “Really? Each of these 50 pieces of information are that critical?” To be truthful, there are almost no topics where all the information is mission critical. But even if there was, relying on memory for 50 pieces of information is a big mountain to climb.

Human beings forget. Forgetting is built into our cognitive machinery. In many ways, forgetting is good for us. It enables us to tune our brains to what’s most important now. Here’s a personal example. At one point in my life, understanding the “analysis of variance” statistical procedure was very important to my success. Now, that information serves me better as a faded memory, so that I can focus my active memory on skills I currently use, including how to present, how to write, and how to find memes quickly in online meetings.

Getting back to my interrogator—the subject matter expert with 50 critical pieces of information—we can absolutely create a training program to ensure that learners remember those 50 vital concepts. However, designing a training program with that many “mission critical” pieces of information would take a lot of time and resources to develop. Instead, I’d advise the interrogator to consider two key questions:

1. Are all 50 pieces of critical information tied to your desired business outcomes? Training and development is most effective when learning outcomes are tied directly to desired business outcomes and desired mindsets and behaviors for performers. If your business goals are focused and specific, it’s likely that the information included in your training program can be focused, concise, and specific, too.
2. Can some of the critical pieces of information move into a database or job aid? In some sense, these tools create external memory storage so that learners don’t have to rely fully on human memory. Indeed, one principle we should remember is that where we can’t rely on our learners’ installed long-term memory storage—because the content is too complex, or we don’t have the time or resources to provide sufficient learning supports—we should use some form of external memory storage or create just-in-time support.
3. Can some of the information be better learned on the job? As learning professionals, we sometimes forget about on-the-job learning. Often, we can cull our learning points by dividing them into those that will be learned on the job and those that need extra emphasis via training. We can then eliminate the content that will be learned regardless of whether it is trained or not.
4. Can we let some content go? The three methods above are great, but they are not enough! Even if we select content that is critical, we may still need to prioritize to ensure we are creating effective learning experiences. When we teach too much content, we lose effectiveness. To avoid this, we may simply have to select some content to teach and leave the rest on the cutting room floor.
5. Can we add more learning time? We can give our critical content enough learning support—without cutting any of it—by simply adding more learning time. By using the extra time to reinforce the learning, we get rid of the problem of covering the content at a perfunctory level.

The Requirements for Successful Learning

To see why too much content hurts learning, it’s helpful to consider what learning requires for maximum benefit. The following is not an exhaustive list, but it outlines the most critical elements:

1. Learners must pay attention to the learning content in ways that lead to comprehension.
2. Learners must understand the learning content—comprehending it in ways that can lead to its future use.
3. Learners must believe in the learning content—they must feel it is worthwhile enough to fully process, to attempt to remember, and to plan and organize for applying in the future.
4. Learners must be motivated to apply what they learned—through intrinsic and/or external motivators.
5. Learners must remember what they learned when they encounter situations that would benefit from their new knowledge and skills.
6. Learners must be able to overcome obstacles to their learning application, including handling a variety of situations, persevering despite headwinds, and generally being resilient.

This list makes clear that attention and understanding—what we target when we simply broadcast content to learners—is wholly insufficient for learning.

As researchers noted in a top-tier scientific journal, “information and demonstrations (i.e., workbooks, lectures, and videos) remain the strategies of choice in industry… And this is a problem. We know from the body of research that learning occurs through the practice and feedback components.”

What is Lost When We Have Too Much Content?

Including too much content not only causes problems because it harms attention and hurts the comprehension process—it also makes it impossible to add critical learning-supportive activities. Here are the things that are lost when we teach too much content. Here are the things we won’t have time for:

• Emphasizing the relevance of the content to our learners.
• Persuading learners to bolster their belief in the content.
• Helping learners test and reinforce their comprehension.
• Motivating and preparing learners for applying the learning.
• Providing repetitions to support understanding and remembering.
• Providing realistic practice to support remembering.
• Providing spaced repetitions to support remembering.
• Providing practice in situation handling to enable application.
• Inoculating learners against the obstacles they will face.
• Setting contextual triggers to support context-cued remembering.
• Setting goals to enable future meta-cognitive efforts at applying the learning.

How to Convince Others of the Danger of Content Overload

So, let’s assume that you and I are convinced that content overload is a problem. But we have stakeholders who don’t know this indisputable truth—and we want to convince them so that we can design more effective learning and performance interventions. What do we do?

First, we manage our expectations and keep trying. We may not be successful in our first attempts, but we—like our learners—must persevere over time, and never give up! Overloading on content is bad for our learners. It’s bad for our organizations. It can even be bad for the people and situations that our learners encounter. We have a responsibility to keep trying, even if we were worn down before.

Second, we must realize that there is no magic bullet when it comes to persuading others, bringing our stakeholders along, and moving toward the ideal. Everybody has different perspectives—buoyed by different experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs. We must listen to others’ perspectives and stay aware of our own blind spots or biases. The ideas I share below for educating others about the dangers of content overload may work for some people and not others. We are all individuals. It’s our job to build relationships first—to more fully understand and appreciate where our stakeholders are coming from—rather than just jumping to one or more of the following approaches.

That being said, here are several approaches you can take to convince others of the importance of succinct, easy-to-absorb learning content. All of the steps involve building or deepening your relationship with stakeholders in some way:

• Ask stakeholders to reflect on presentations or trainings that did not work for them. Remind them of “death-by-bullet-points.” Highlight that these failed attempts were focused mostly on content.
• Share with them all your team’s goals for learning, showing how attention and comprehension are not enough. Feel free to share or modify the list above, “Requirements for Successful Learning.” Remind them that it is impossible to reach all these goals by providing wave after wave of content.
• Share the LTEM framework (the Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model, shown below) with your stakeholders. It details the kinds of learning outcomes your organization can aim for, and by differentiating between learner ratings, knowledge, decision-making competence, and task competence, LTEM suggests that learning can have different outcomes depending on how it is designed.

• Share with them your learning team’s list of critical learning elements. Feel free to take the list above in the section, “What is Lost When We Have Too Much Content?” and add to it. Remember, that list comprises only what is lost. You’ll want to add additional items that help your team guide attention and support comprehension as well.
• Share with them the learning and forgetting curves (shown below). These curves can demonstrate that creating learning is not enough—that we also must work to minimize forgetting and support remembering.

• Build a rapid prototype that cuts out half the content (or whatever percentage is appropriate), that reinforces the remaining content to truly support learning, and pilot test it. See if the results are satisfactory. Consider options—for example, porting the extra content into accessible knowledge repositories, job aids, etc.
• Do a formal comparison of a high-content course versus a medium-content course. Consider using rigorous research methodologies, including randomly assigning learners to condition and controlling for extraneous factors.•
• Find one or more early-adopter stakeholders who are willing to use a learning program that utilizes fewer content nuggets, and more learning supports. When successful, capture and broadcast the results and their testimonials.
• Share this article with your stakeholders. It was written to be persuasive, and you’ve read this far, so maybe it is!

Research and Publications

Cinel, C., Cortis Mack, C., & Ward, G. (2018). Towards augmented human memory: Retrieval-induced forgetting and retrieval practice in an interactive, end-of-day review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(5), 632–661.

Kim, A. S. N., Wong-Kee-You, A. M. B., Wiseheart, M., & Rosenbaum, R. S. (2019). The spacing effect stands up to big data. Behavior Research Methods, 51(4), 1485–1497.

McDaniel, M. A., & Einstein, G. O. (2020). Training learning strategies to promote self-regulation and transfer: The knowledge, belief, commitment, and planning framework. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(6), 1363–1381.

Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S.I., Kraiger, K., & Smith-Jentsch, K.A. (2012) The science of training and development in organizations: What matters in practice. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13, 74-101.

Schweppe, J., & Rummer, R. (2014). Attention, working memory, and long-term memory in multimedia learning: An integrated perspective based on process models of working memory. Educational Psychology Review, 26(2), 285–306.

Thalheimer, W. (2018). The Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model. Available at: https://www.worklearning.com/ltem/.

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