Work of 19th century German scientist revitalised in contemporary e-learning platform

Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve

At the end of the nineteenth century the German psychologist Ebbinghaus discovered that people forget about 80 percent of newly acquired knowledge within 24 hours (1).

Ebbinghaus claimed that repetition was the remedy for forgetting. He formulated a rule of thumb for a repetition scheme that ensures that knowledge is fixed in the long-term memory. MemoTrainer is based on this scheme.

The education process

The traditional education process describes the different stages of bringing a student from a present level up to a desired level.

• Pretest: Determine the present level of the student to decide the learning plan;
• Transfer: Newly acquired knowledge is being transferred to the student;
• Test: Determine to see whether the student really reached the desired level.

These three stages can be identified in every course.

The education process with the forgetting curve

Experience has shown that students begin to study the literature a few days before the exam. At this stage they have nearly forgotten what they have learned during the courses. The newly acquired knowledge was not absorbed in the long-term memory and therefore the desired level of knowledge is only of short duration.

MemoTrainer adds two stages to the education process:

• Training: Exam preparation;
• Maintenance: Maintain the acquired knowledge after the exam in the scope of permanent education.

Both stages are recognised by knowledge repetition through  MemoTraining. The moment and the composition of this MemoTraining is fully automised to every individual student.,/p>

MemoTrainer and the theory of constructivism

The Ebbinghaus' theory of repetition has been the foundation for many (classical) didactical models. Especially in 'the fifties' education was pure pounding knowledge. Nowadays, the didactical theories put more accent on connecting the knowledge with the present knowledge of the student.

The constructivism, for example, accepts that the newly acquired knowledge will be absorbed directly into the long-term memory when connected to the present knowledge of the student. Present knowledge will be activated by asking questions.

With MemoTrainer, every individual student will receive a personalized training compound of questions that exactly activate and train the knowledge important for that individual student.