School Climate Assessment of Transferees: Addressing Transfer-Outs through a Proposed Retention Program.
School Climate Assessment of Transferees: Addressing Transfer-Outs through a Proposed Retention Program.
Whether you’re a student or working professional looking to keep your skills current, the importance of being able to transfer what you learn in one context to an entirely new one cannot be overstated. Of course, the goal of any learning or training is to eventually be able to apply it in real-world situations, but a PayScale survey released last year found that 60 percent of employers don’t believe recent graduates are well-prepared for their jobs.
One possible reason for this is that memory is context dependent, so transferring or recalling something that was learned in a classroom setting to a fast-paced work environment isn’t always easy.
Once you understand how to go about transferring your knowledge to new contexts, however, you could change jobs or even careers and still find ways to apply your prior knowledge to the situations and problems you might face in a new role.
With this in mind, here are some tips for taking what you learn in educational settings and applying it in the workplace and other areas of your life.
Research shows that when learning is relevant, students are able to connect what they’re learning to what they already know and build new neural connections and long-term memory storage.
So if you want your learning to be engaging and to be able to remember it in other contexts, it’s important to establish relevance early on. Think about how you might apply what you’re learning today in your future job or everyday life and then try to tie it to some of your short or long-term goals.
For instance, if one of your long-term goals is to land a job in IT, focusing on how your course will help you reach that goal can make even the most tedious study material seem more engaging, because you understand that it’s important to your future goals.
Before you can transfer knowledge to new contexts, you need to understand the concept inside and out, which is why it’s important to take time for reflection and self-explanation. Research shows that self-explanation can help you to identify any incorrect assumptions, lead to a deeper understanding of the material, and ultimately promote knowledge transfer.
So when you’re learning about something that’s completely new to you, take a moment to think about how you would explain it in your own words, whether this means using simpler words that are easier for you to remember or finding a way to connect the new information to something you already know by using real-world examples.
Another way to facilitate the transfer of learning to new contexts is to use as many different learning media as possible, from text and imagery to video and audio.
Research shows that using pictures, narration, and text can help prevent your cognitive resources from becoming overloaded and improve learning transfer. One study found that learners who used relevant visuals were able to retain more information and scored higher on transfer tests than those who used only text. They also perceived the content as easier to learn when visuals were used.
Even if your course doesn’t have visuals or narration built into it, you can try to find ways to supplement what you’re learning by using a variety of educational resources such as YouTube and TED Talks or iTunes U, EdX, and Coursera.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with your learning by studying around the same time, in the same location, and using the same study strategies every day. But when you get used to constantly studying in the same way, it can be difficult to transfer the knowledge you acquire to new environments and situations.
Research shows that organising your learning in a more random way improves retention and transfer after (but not during) the training. So although studying in different environments and conditions may initially make it harder to remember what you’re learning, in the long run it will help you retain the information more effectively.
This concept is known as desirable difficulties, because although introducing certain difficulties into the learning process will initially feel uncomfortable, it also encourages a deeper processing of materials.