The A.G.E.S model is an essential concept in neuroscience that you can leverage to create effective learning programs necessary to improve employee performance.It’s effective and depends on how the human brain retains knowledge for a long time.
A.G.E.S is an acronym which stands for Attention, Generation, Emotions, and Spacing. It has been proven that it is highly effective in both e-learning and traditional classroom teaching.
Research has it that during training, learning retention and recall get connected to the strength of activating the hippocampus in your brain.
During training, the A.G.E.S model focuses on four essential elements, including attention, generation, emotions, and spacing, to improve retention.
Attention
Attention is similar to focus, which is one of the essential ingredients in learning retention.
An employee is able to acquire knowledge and retain it better if he focuses on training without having divided attention while learning.
It can be hard to manage attention during training, irrespective of the learning modality that’s being used. For instance, when your employees are present in a learning program, are they there or their attentions are somewhere else?
Two vital factors can make your employees more focused on a learning program.
- If the training is highly engaging. (which I have covered before)
- If they can understand how relevant the training is to their success in your organization.
So, irrespective of the challenges being faced by learning professionals, creating engaging and relevant training will help them address the first point of A.G.E.S.
Generation
Generation in this context is the ability of learners to create a connection to new ideas.
That usually involves mapping out what they are learning to their pre-existing knowledge.
That means each learner not necessarily need to listen passively but must be able to generate their mental links during training.
But how can you effectively make generations happen when creating your online learning program?
While numerous strategies can work, simply creating training involving multiple senses will work best in helping learners retain knowledge.
However, learning professionals must be able to link learning programs to individual employee’s roles.
And instead of just reading or watching, learners must be able to listen, think, speak, and practice during the learning process.
Emotions
Emotion is the third element that helps to promote learning and retention.
So, the stronger you’re able to make your learners feel emotional during your training program, the more you’re able to help them retain knowledge.
However, it doesn’t have to be too strong as that can even distract learners from the learning objectives.
Create a learning experience that enables your employees to connect, interact, and learn together to become more productive.
Also, here you can introduce gamification and game-based learning as both of them are essential to help increase employee engagement levels.
Spacing
Usually, most training sessions in an organization is a one-time thing. Even if the satisfactory rating of the program is high, there’s a slim chance that participants are going to achieve long term retention.
That’s because long term retention works better when we learn over several spaced sittings. These spaces allow learners to have time to reflect on what they have learned before the next training session.
Campbell Craig 