Liftology 23: The Learning Science Behind LIFT Structure

The way we structure learning aggregates several prompts into LIFTs, that are streamed out over time after an event, or events, to create a full journey. But why do we aggregate several prompts together? Why not just one at the timing of the LIFTs?

First, of course, the timing of the LIFT is based on learning science. We look at how frequently a task is performed, how important it is, how much learners know to start, and how inherently complex a topic is. Then, we use that information to determine how many LIFTs, but the timing is based upon what we know about human memory. 

However, that ‘inherently complex’ plays a role in why we do several prompts. First, we typically are addressing several objectives in a journey. At the top level it might be ‘communicating’, but that breaks down into creating your message, and delivering it (as one way to carve it up). The point is that we’re usually doing several things. Plus, we don’t want journeys to go on endlessly. Though learning is a continual process, for specific topics we want to do more than we currently do but we still need a stopping point for our efforts. 

We’re also making some assumptions. For one, the ‘heavy lifting’ for learning is being handled in the events. The LIFTs are small reactivations to help cement that learning to prevent forgetting from taking place. Another is that we’re not just reactivating learning, but we’re also transitioning to practice, and evaluating the outcomes. Thus, we have multiple things we want to cover and in several stages. 

By aggregating several prompts on different things, we’re reactivating in several different ways. You can think of it like going to the gym or some other form of exercise; you typically don’t do just one thing, but you work several different muscle groups in different ways. You spend half an hour or more each time you go, but you’re best not doing the same thing every day. Here, we’re just reactivating several different things, then taking another break. 

Thus, we think several activities are appropriate as part of every reactivation. That’s why there are several prompts as part of every LIFT; for better learning, and therefore better outcomes.