What's the Best Way to Learn? Improve Learning Retention With Multisensory Training Experiences

Learning retention has always been a huge challenge in training for employees effectively because of how easy it is for humans to forget what they hear or read in a classroom. Getting your training sessions to succeed and consistently feel productive requires constant improvement in teaching methods by educators. Using the same teaching strategy all the time rarely works, especially in a diverse class of learners who learn best in different ways.

A significant breakthrough in these challenges lie in the intergration of multisensory experiences within training solutions. By engaging more of the trainee’s senses, training programs create a richer, more memorable experience to effectively enhance knowledge retention and having trainees be ten times more confident and prepared for the real thing.

The Science Behind a Multisensory Approach in Learning

Cognitive Load Theory: This theory on learning is based on the idea that there is a limit to how much information a human mind can process at one time, and that distributing information across multiple sensory channels make this easier to process then having all the information go through a single channel, which one be an ineffective unisensory learning approach.

Different Types of Learners: It’s known that there are some people who are ‘visual learners’ while some are ‘auditory learners’, logically, this points towards using both methods of teaching so that both types of learners can have a high level of retention. This theory can go further when including other senses such as touch, smell and taste where applicable.

Dale’s Cone of Experience: Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience is the origin of the saying ‘We remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we see and read and 90% of what we do’. It’s important to note that this is a misquote and these percentages are made up. The learning pyramid was corrupted after learners misunderstood Dale, who only meant the cone to be a visual analogy of methods of learning from more abstract to more concrete methods. Nowadays, we realize that we should be using a variety of abstract or concrete methods, such as reading and writing, as well as direct experience and watching demonstrations for the most effective learning.

Improved Memory Performance: Research has suggested that learning through the use of multiple senses improves our memory performance. Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve has proven that people are likely to quickly forget information overtime, however a well-known virtual reality software company has a great post about how the forgetting curve can be improved by learning in virtual reality, which I believe can be attributed to kinesthetic learning, combined with immersive audiovisual learning which is an improvement from traditional styles of audiovisual.

Examples of Sensory Integration in Learning

So how can we incorprate the multi-sensory approach? It depends on the industry and what you aim to teach, in most cases Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic (Touch) can be used while Olfactory (Smell) and Gustatory (Taste) would only be usable in specific specialised cases, but here are some examples for each of the different senses.

Visual:

• High quality 2d or 3d visuals to represent concepts or processes

• Data visualization tools, mind maps, infographics

• Textbooks to be read

• Photos to study

• Films (Can have potential for auditory at the same time)

Auditory:

• Audiobooks, narrating or presenting to support textual or visual content

• Films (Visual at the same time)

• Spatial audio within a simulation

Kinesthetic:

• Physical replicas, Racing simulations, Plane simulations

• Interactive touchscreen applications

• Haptic feedback controllers

• Simulations that build muscle memory for particular actions

Olfactory & Gustatory (Specialized cases):

• Learning certain aromas in food safety

• Using scent in firefighting simulations

• Culinary training using food tasting to understand flavour profiles and ingredient quality

Benefits of a Multisensory Approach

• Enhanced Enagement: Engaging multiple senses captrues attention more effectively, keeping learners engaged and invested in learning material.

• Improved Retention: Information presented through multiple senses has been proven to be more successful in learning retention, particularly audiovisual information.

• Accessibility: Different learners remember things more effectively depending on what suits them best, the more senses you integrate, the likelier you are to resonate with a how a specific learner’s memory works.

• Skills Gained Transfer Easily to Real-World Scenarios: With kinesthetic sensory engagement, learners can build muscle memory to effectively train their bodies to have practiced and be fully prepared for a scenario, especially if it’s a consistently repeatable process.

Case Studies and Real World Examples

• Healthcare Training Simulations:

  • CPR Training, kinesthetic training for performing CPR, and auditory training with learning the rhythm to pump the heart

• HSE Training:

  • Visual, spatial audio, kinaesthetic muscle memory can be used in VR Training

  • Visualize real incidents as they happen, see what lead up to an incident and the result of the incident

• Industrial Training:

  • Learn visually how to use equipment by watching demonstrations or animations, reading instructions

  • Listen to instructions or training instructor on their guidance in using industrial equpiment

  • Learn by doing using VR training to learn the kinesthetic movements

• Food and Drinks:

  • Food safety training via smells and taste testing

  • Wine connoisseur’s learn to taste and smell different wines

How Is Technology Used in Multisensory Learning

VR/AR Applications: Virtual Reality (VR) fully immerses users into a virtual environment and provides the unique benefit of incorporating kinesthetic training by actually placing learners into a situation. This complements the audiovisual learning from textbooks, presentations, elearning, and increases the variety of senses being used, by having a combination of spatial audio, visual, and kinesthetic learning.

Augmented Reality (AR) boosts traditional learning by using the same senses in a different way, after learning through standard traditional training which involves auditory and visual based training, more variety can be added by including a different form of audiovisual learning by overlaying digital elements such as instructions, diagrams, etc when observing real equipment.

So What is the Best Way to Learn?

In conclusion, integrating multiple sensory experiences, and introducing a varied approach with multiple different types of learning where textbooks, elearning, presentations, video-based learning, and VR/AR, are all included.

The best way to learn is to combining all these methods in separate instances, and when possible introduce multisensory learning by involving VR simulations in your training for the most full-fledged training program. Having multisensory learning will enhance the learning process and increase confidence when training for employees.