17 June 2025
The science of effective learning content: what makes training stick?
Jonny McAlister
Head of Customer Experience
How do you make workplace training stick? Explore the science behind effective, sticky learning content.
High levels of learner engagement are all well and good but if L&D is really going to deliver results, it needs to transfer skills and knowledge to the learner. In other words, it needs to stick.
So, how do you create effective learning content that equips your people with new skills or critical training that stays with them for the long term?
Yes, the quality of the learning content itself is vital. But in this article, we’re focusing on the science of sticky content. Follow the research to create effective learning content for your organisation.
Repeat, repeat, repeat
There’s a good reason our teachers always told us to revise before exams. Repetition is the most effective way of making learning content stick. In fact, repetition is the mother of learning, according to a Latin proverb.
That wisdom is backed up by more recent studies showing that repeating and spacing out learning creates better recognition memory. Repeating learning builds stronger and faster neural connections, which ultimately become established circuits through the process of repetition.
But…
Repeat with variety
While any form of repetition makes learning content more effective, the best way to make it stick is to offer diverse learning experiences. Repeating the same learning doesn’t necessarily mean taking the same course over and over again.
Engineering professor Barbara Oakley says that the power of repetition to build neural connections is most effective when learning is repeated in different settings over time.
Use the full array of resources available within your LMS to deliver the same learning in different formats. This could include video webinars, classroom and offline learning, and a combination of video, text, images and interactive content. You can also use adaptive tests so that assessments evolve to test only the aspects that have not yet stuck for your learners.
Bring learning into the real world
Create opportunities for the knowledge acquired from a piece of learning content to be used in practice. This could be through action learning, simulations or gamification.
The long-established 70:20:10 formula suggests that 70% of all learning comes from job-related experiences. A further 20% comes from interactions with others. Only 10% of learning is directly derived from formal learning content.
With that in mind, following up courses with opportunities to apply the knowledge gained in the real world will help the training to stick in the long term.
Deploy social learning
Remember the 20% from the 70:20:10 formula? Encourage interactions between learners to facilitate social learning experiences that stick. LMS forums and user-generated learning content are both useful tools for achieving this.
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Get in touchUse storytelling
Research shows that storytelling is an effective way to deliver learning that sticks. Psychologist Peg Neuhauser and her researchers found that groups of employees given learning rooted in stories remembered the information far more accurately than those presented with the same information in facts and figures.
There’s another key advantage of using storytelling in learning. Around 40% of learners learn most effectively from visuals, such as videos, illustrations and infographics. A further 40% will be auditory learners who learn best through listening. The final 20% will be kinesthetic learners, who are best suited to learning by doing and experiencing.
Learning based on storytelling and delivered via a modern learning management system meets the needs of all three learner types. Graphic-led videos, compelling voiceovers and interactive features will increase knowledge retention among all learners. As such, it has the potential to make training stick for all of your employees.
Break learning into bitesize chunks
Microlearning — or breaking courses down into bitesize chunks of learning content — has been shown to increase knowledge retention. A 2005 study by Nelson Cowan and Zhijian Chen found that sharing information in small, manageable chunks resulted in participants remembering significantly more than when the same information was presented as individual elements.
Research focusing specifically on online learning has delivered similar findings. For their study How video production affects student engagement: an empirical study of MOOC videos, Philip J. Guo, Juho Kim and Rob Rubin examined data from 6.9 million video sessions across four edX online courses. They found that learning content videos less than six minutes long had a median engagement of almost 100%. Given the significant drop in engagement for longer videos, they concluded the online learning videos should be shorter than six minutes.
That means that even long, complex courses are more engaging when they are broken into shorter chunks.
Start sharing training that sticks
We have a variety of options to help you deliver effective learning content to your learners. These include off-the-shelf e-learning content and custom e-learning content.
Schedule a demo today.
