Creating your own learning model is not a linear process. It takes years of deep inquiry, prototyping ideas and solutions with partners and learners, tearing things up and starting over. The path to learning and behavior change is not easily navigated. However, there are some key elements that have been proven throughout human history to dramatically amplify and improve learning outcomes and shifts in mindset: connection, practice and reflection.
Each of these elements are powerful tools for learning, training and coaching. They motivate people, amplify the material and solidify outcomes. They are also all proven with a vast expanse of research and practical exemplars. Each one separately can have powerful results, but when combined, the engagement, joy and results are unmatched.
Learners, learning and development (L&D) professionals, even investors bemoan the lack of engagement on most learning platforms, and yet not much changes with the solutions or forcing agents that lead to their decision-making. In order to engender modalities that truly move the needle of engagement and learning outcomes, an explicit, thoughtful and intentional approach is essential.
This is what initially led my co-founder and I to identify iterative cycles of connection, practice, and reflection as the key elements for any successful learning journey — or as we call it now, CPR for your learning, training and coaching. Particularly when it comes to workshops, courses and programs that utilize technology tools and interventions. Without these three elements, experiences quickly become passive, boring and even isolating and depressing.
We hear these things constantly from people, so why are so few people talking openly about it? Let’s name this challenge together and work on solutions in a collective impact type of manner. Discover your allies and make some magic happen! Of course, it takes patience and intentional work to prototype, test, measure and realize a new learning model — and we’ve been on that exciting and sometimes scary journey for 10 years.
Over that span, our team has collated a range of evidence-based research that directly supports our theory of learning and change for virtual and blended training and coaching that sticks.
The CPR Learning Flywheel™
Here are some of our findings with our learning model and some actionable steps you can take to harness this proven approach:
Connection
With our collaborative work in the space with thought-leading talent development providers and their luminary corporate clients (as learners), we found that providing a range of opportunities for learners to lean on one another, connect with their facilitators and peers and invite “supporters” to encourage them along their learning journeys was critical.
In co-designing hundreds of powerful learning experiences, we have seen that good old-fashioned connection provides an elixir that most humans crave. It allows one to receive support, feedback, new ideas and concepts — yes, from other humans, not machines!
Actionable Step
The next time you design a blended learning experience, think critically about why and how you’ll integrate human connection into the mix. What elements should be live and which should be asynchronous interactions between peers, or learners and their coaches and managers?
Practice
Once you’ve connected with others and learned together, spaced properly over time as the research has shown, it’s vital that you are able to practice what you’ve learned and share it with others. We all know this, so why is it so often lost in the L&D process? Content alone often wins over the ability to practice what you learn. But without practice, we lose 90% of what we’ve learned within 90 days of learning it.
Based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, we know that forgetting is a natural thing. However, effective, consistent and spaced practice is one of the most fundamental areas needed for mastery of any skill (soft skills included). Unfortunately, high quality, thoughtful practice is often missing from learning and development programs.
We always encourage colleagues to focus on the most impactful ways to embed and enable practice in their programs. For example, practice can include recording a video of something you are practicing like communication, sales or another soft skill. In our blended and online experiences, we have tracked, measured and witnessed learners have much higher motivation, enjoyment and retention when they are able to engage in meaningful practice exercises that are related to their roles and goals.
Actionable Step
Practice can look like a lot of things. Moving an object in an interactive video to do a knowledge check is certainly one way to leverage practice; however, we can add to that with prompting learners to journal, sketch, record a mock demonstration, etc. Let’s get creative with our practice exercises, codify them on a learning platform, and ensure that this platform enables the type of practice that you desire.
Reflection
Reflection is another extremely powerful tool often missing from the learning and development flow. As we know, reflection is a key feedback loop that does not require any answers from others or fancy content, just the work one does with oneself, or in a team or group.
Adult learning theory underscores the importance of creating reflection opportunities throughout the learning experience — including self-reflection, group reflection and peer reflection. This intentional space for reflection is not just about recall, but about connecting the dots and seeing the bigger picture. Engaging in brief, reflective conversations with a peer or mentor can help solidify their understanding and crystallize their thoughts. Processing new information in manageable segments increases the likelihood of retention. Moreover, connecting these reflective moments to real-life experiences and contexts further aids learners in making meaningful connections with the material.
In a nutshell, having additional feedback from a trainer, coach or peer on one’s reflections adds another layer of support and activation for the learning. Reflection on its own is an incredibly powerful tool, but add in these levels of feedback and support, and you have a supercharged alchemy for learning that sticks. Often this is the key ingredient for any individual or team to effectively process and implement what’s being learned, particularly if it’s related to behaviors or soft skills.
Leadership training and coaching require deep reflection practices as well. Refection is directly tied to vital areas of whole-person development such as self-awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy and psychological safety, just to name a few. Including reflection in our learning model was a very intentional decision, given its critical importance in human development. We have seen much higher engagement, completion rates and learning outcomes when this modality is incorporated effectively into a blended learning experience.
Actionable Step
In many ways, individual or group reflection can be the most powerful of the CPR facets. There are so many ways you can elicit reflection from a learner, so we always suggest trying out several and seeing what sticks. Ask learners to reflect on a specific topical area, ask for a reflection on the experience as a whole, prompt a reflection for how the person is feeling as they go through this learning experience. This will not only help to activate their learning, but also provide you with incredible feedback and emerging ideas with how to shape the learning arc in the future.
Conclusion
Through refinement of our own approach and deep work over the years, we started the CPR Learning Flywheel™ with explicit intentions to thoughtfully introduce technology as a key element in modern, successful blended learning experiences that will inform outcomes in the future of work. Strategically spacing learning over time, coupled with supportive nudges, collaborative insights, and meaningful practice and reflection, will significantly improve engagement and learning outcomes.
