We’ve all been to the training program that starts off with, “Welcome to part 1 of xyz, I’m Sally, and I am going to be the teacher today. Turn off your cellphones, grab a glass of water, and let me know if you need a break to refresh your mind.” Sally then proceeds to go through a list of housekeeping items for 10-minutes, including a little bit about herself and her background. She ends it with a ‘let’s get started’ and tries to say it with as much enthusiasm as possible because she knows you’re already bored.

This is so standard and predictable that even if the information is exciting in nature, you’re already bored. You’re thinking about your emails, the work you could be doing instead of sitting in on this training, or daydreaming about what you’re going to do when the presentation is done.

The thing is, if Sally were to approach you in a different way, this preprogramming could change with some tricks, tips, and techniques for the first couple of minutes. Corporate training needs to be based on adult learning theory and principles, helping you to really immerse yourself in the content, so you feel alert and somewhat enthusiastic about the content at hand.

Start with the First and Last Piece of Information

When designing courses, coaching, and mentoring, it’s essential to understand the basics of the ID9 Intelligent Design psychology method: primacy and recency. In essence, ‘people remember best, what they hear first and last.’

Think about it. Primacy relates to the information that was presented first, while recency relates to the information presented most recently. The recency effect results in a better recall of the most recent information, and when paired with primacy, it tends to be the only two things you are probably going to take away from the presentation. Therefore, professional development training needs to take these realities into account.

Sousa, David. A 2011 book on ‘How the brain learns’ described Primacy and Recency

 Sousa suggests one factor affecting retention is the primacy-recency effect – essentially, the idea that in a “learning episode,” we recall the things that came first (primacy) and the things that came last (recency) better than we recall the things in the middle.

Several of Sousa’s points can be summarized in an ideal learning design system, outlined below:

1. Teach the New Material First: This isn’t just stating the obvious. Sousa gives the example of an English teacher asking a class what onomatopoeia There’s a brief discussion with lots of wrong answers (because the students had no idea). But the students wrote those wrong answers on the subsequent test – partly because they occurred in that initial period. This kind of teaching format captures more attention and acts as an assessment tool to measure learning outcomes that your team can observe for new corporate training programs down the line.
   
   
2. Use the Prime Time Wisely: Prime Time is the minutes that form the start and end of a learning session. Even with the best of intentions, teachers can do the following: after commanding focus by telling the class the day’s lesson objective, the teacher takes attendance, distributes the previous day’s homework, collects that days’ homework, requests notes from students who were absent, and reads an announcement about a club meeting after school. As a finale, the teacher tells the students they were so well-behaved during the lesson that they can do anything they want during the last five minutes of class (i.e., during prime time, as long as they are quiet).
   
   How many training sessions in business have you endured with a similar pattern? They start with, “today we’re going to learn how to effectively plan sales campaigns, or let’s start here from so-and-so in the sales department,” or, “look at these sales figures from 2005.”  And, they may end with, “Let’s have an early mark, please complete your evaluation forms, and then you can go.” Unfortunately, in this business example, Prime Time is underutilized with primacy and recency opportunities wasted.
   
   
3. Retention Varies with Length of Episode. “As the lesson time lengthens, the percentage of down-time [when retention is at its lowest] increases faster than for the prime -times.” Shorter (in general) is better. And varying the type of activity, the instructional method, or even the topic between peak periods is beneficial to learning. Learning and development specialists base their entire training design and development around brevity, knowing that the brain works in ‘sprints’ when gathering and remembering information. Countless studies have detailed what happens with retention when training times drag on.