Why you need to do some short courses before you start your qualification.

I was reading a great article about a study done on learning rates. The paper “An astonishing regularity in student learning rate,” was authored by Kenneth Koedinger and colleagues. They observed over 6000 students engaged in online courses in math, science, and language learning, ranging from elementary school to college.

The authors then broke down what students were learning into knowledge components, and created a model that defined the individual factors responsible for learning each topic.

Immediately, they observed that students enter classes with significant differences in prior knowledge. This difference in prior knowledge translated to differing volumes of practice needed to achieve mastery. Strong students needed roughly 4 opportunities to master a given knowledge component, whereas weaker students required more than 13. A dramatic difference!

Interestingly, the rate of learning between strong and weaker students was surprisingly uniform. Both groups improved at the same rate — achieving roughly a 2.5% increase in accuracy per learning opportunity. It was simply that the better students started with more knowledge, so they didn’t have as far to go to reach mastery.

So, to all of you considering, or maybe even just starting out in your qualification. There is clear evidence that taking short courses to bolster your prior learning can accelerate your path to mastery!

I guess this is not much different to employers hiring candidates with sound prior experience!