If you don’t use it you lose it.

I thought that this PeopleSkills.pdf was just on the mark. There is nothing worse than trying to teach somebody something and having them forget it. I remember thinking the same thing while teaching at Schulich. While students typically had to do something up to seven times to learn it for an exam, the type of learning without further reinforcement was of questionable value. Having kept in touch with students for several years after teaching them I was able to assess how much they actually learned. Much to my surprise, I found that if they could use the teaching outside of my classroom shortly thereafter and if they could continue to use it then they remembered it. Otherwise, nothing. One key takeaway for me from that experience was”if you don’t use it you lose it.”