Saturday, November 1, 2008

Edgar Dale on retention of learning






BUT


These figures have been challenged here:
Will at Work Learning Blog

and here:
Cisco Report: Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says

The Cisco Report debunks Dale's percentages. Of course they were too rounded and tidy anway. It bemoans the fact that they have been so widely distributed and traces the myth back to source.
The paper describes the reason why people find the myth so compelling, which is the desire for the "magic bullet" or the "easy way" to do something that is complex.

The Cisco Report is worth a read.

2 comments:

Ulrich said...

Thank you for your interesting blog and for sharing your tools, good resource. I just want to add a my 2c to this post. Dale's pyramid seems to be around for quite a while. Unfortunately there seems to be no evidence for the percentages. Two sources stating that can be found in my blogpost.

Ulrich

starpath said...

Thank-you for that reference. Excellent spotting. These figures needed questioning.