Supporting Learner Retention With Drip Feed Learning I recently attended a session at ATD 2022...
Supporting Learner Retention With Drip Feed Learning
I recently attended a session at ATD 2022 called Drips, Bots, and Blogs: Nontraditional Methods for Learning Reinforcement. This session, led by Shannon Tipton, owner of Learning Rebels, discussed the concept of drip feed learning as a strategy to support learner retention.
What’s Drip Feed Learning?
Drip feed learning refers to the scheduled delivery of chunked content done in support of spaced learning. With spaced learning, an instructor delivers new information to learners and then revisits this content after some time has passed (typically days or weeks). This is done in an attempt to minimize the effects of the forgetting curve. Drip feeding learning, then, supports spaced learning by providing learners with planned ‘drips’ of content to reinforce learning. This scheduled delivery of chunked content helps to ease the load on working memory and enables learners to practice retrieval. As Tipton says, “…part of [the learning process] is moving information from the working memory to the long-term memory, and when we drip feed, we’re allowing more time and more space for that to happen.”
An Example of Drip Feed Learning
In her talk, Tipton gave an example of drip feed learning. A course called Sales Negotiation Skills may be chunked into six specific topics. These topics can then become the subject of six weekly drips. In this example, the instructor has decided that these drips will be delivered after the course has finished. The scheduled topics included:
- Week 1: Customer Pain Points
- Week 2: Articulating Product Features
- Week 3: Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Sales
- Week 4: Connecting Pain Points with Feeling Statements
- Week 5: Connecting Pain Points with Product
- Week 6: Changing Mindset to Strengthen Relationships
Each drip featured a discussion question that could be answered in a Discussion Board post. For instance, in Week 1, learners were presented with the question: “Why should we care about the different types of pain points?”.
Each drip was also accompanied by a resource. In Tipton’s example, resources such as videos, cheat sheets, articles, decision trees, and podcasts were shared with learners. For example, in Week 1, learners were provided with a video about the topic of customer pain points.
When Does the Drip Delivery Arrive?
When used in conjunction with traditional teaching methods, the delivery schedule of your drip learning can vary wildly and be dependent on the course and the needs of your learners. It can include a combination of all the following elements:
- Before the course begins (to allow for pre-assessment and to build excitement for the course)
- Between each lesson (to allow for additional practice and to tease the next lesson)
- For a few weeks after the course ends (to allow for opportunities to practice retrieval after the course is completed)
What’s In a Drip?
The sky is the limit in terms of what you’d like to include in your drip. Sharing resources (like job aids, workbook chapters) and assigning interactive activities (like quizzes, discussion board questions, and case studies) are great ways to engage learners. Your drip will likely include directions to accessing these resources and interactive activities on an LMS.
Tipton stressed that we should think of drips like the teaser at the end of your favourite TV series: you’re given a little teaser of what’s to come, and you’re wanting to know more. That said, there’s lots of storytelling potential in these drips, and thus opportunities to maximize engagement.
Choosing a Drip Tool
There are various drip tools that can be used to deliver the drip, including:
- Blogs
- Chatbots
- Text messages
- Announcements
Tipton also pointed out that these tools often allow for automation, meaning you can plan your drips well in advance.
Using Brightspace to Support Drip Learning
Brightspace can be used to support drip learning in several ways:
Announcements
Announcements make a perfectly good drip! Brightspace allows you to create and share announcements filled with resources, links to the LMS, and opportunities to answer questions in the comment section. For the announcements, you can release an announcement by setting the "Availability" - choosing a future Start Date and specific time!
Email
Send emails packed with relevant content! You can use intelligent agents to schedule the emails and set the schedule to run on specific dates. Note that scheduled emails are often set at the organizational level, which is typically midnight. For immediate action, you can select “run now” in the “actions” dropdown on the Intelligent Agent List and your message will be sent right away.
Will Drip Feed Learning Be Part of Your Toolkit?
Tipton's presentation made the case that drip feed learning is a useful non-traditional method to ensure learners not only receive but retain information.
Have you adopted drip feed learning before? Do you have any ideas on how you would like to implement this strategy? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
Sources:
· Use Drip Feeds to Take Spaced Learning to New Heights
· Learn on the Job: A Spaced Learning Approach
· The Art of Better Learning Retention Through Drip Feed Content
Image Credit:
Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Pexels
Comments
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Amanda, this is a great summary of Shannon's drip feeding insights. I also heard Shannon speak recently at the TICE conference where another speaker, Jennifer Recla, suggested 3 ways to make learning sticky after a course that closely align with Shannon's thoughts on continuing the drip feed post course. I found them so practical and easy to execute. Here they are:
- Using learning reinforcement plans suggesting questions for the leader to ask the learner and indicating action items coming out of the course for the leader to follow up on.
- Emailing tips with three components to learners after the course (1. A question about recall from the course and providing the answer 1 week later. 2. Tips related to the course with a link to a video. 3. A challenge for the week to put their learning into practice for 4-8 weeks after the course).
- Emailing a Likert scale survey asking if the learner has been applying the learning, seeing improvement and engaging each week.
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Amanda, what a fantastic post.
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@Karen McCloskey Glad you had a chance to see Shannon speak as well! Thanks for sharing what you learned from Jennifer's talk - these are really great methods for improving learner retention!
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@Nancy Evans Thanks Nancy - I'm glad you enjoyed it!
