Liftology 14: The role of reapplication

While we need models and examples to provide guidance, ultimately, the only way to learn to do is, well, to do! If you want to play good tennis, you have to play tennis. If you want to be a professional, you’ve got to do the profession. And, of course, there are two ways to do this: simulated, safe practice, and real performance. The latter is great, but can be costly if done wrong. So what do we need to ensure when we’re simulating?

Practice, ideally, is as close to real performance as possible. The next best thing to mentored live performance are simulations. While live performance doesn’t scale well, simulations do. However, both can be costly, both for the necessary skills to develop and the technical sophistication required. There are good approximations that are much more cost effective. 

Branching scenarios, like simulations, have consequences of your actions in the world, and different paths. Unlike simulations, however, where the world is actually modelled, branching scenarios keep the relationships in the world modeled intrinsically in the links. This requires less absolute rigor in development, but limits replay. However, you can cost-effectively build a number of branching scenarios rather than a simulation. 

Of course, even branching scenarios can get complex, and not all budgets and timelines will support them. What is supported are multiple choice questions. Now, these typically are used for knowledge test questions, where we see what learners know about what we told them, but they can also be what I term mini-scenarios. That is, they have a situation that precipitates the need for a decision, and the alternatives are different choices of action. It turns out that they’re not trivial to write, but it’s doable. 

We need to get information into long-term memory, e.g. models and examples. Then, we need to get it out, but the way to get it out is in the way it will be used. Thus, practice is best a simulation of  real practice, and I suggest that this can be done in multiple ways, but the most common way, because it’s most cost-effective, is mini-scenarios. They’re a step along the way, and a great use of reactivation capabilities such as provided by LIFTs.