Training Design Based on Urban Myths?

It seems that everyone in the 1400s believed the earth was flat. That’s why Columbus had such a hard time raising money and sailors to attempt a circumnavigation of the globe. Was it religion, general ignorance of science, an inclination to follow the crowd? What was it then… and what is it now that makes urban myth so hard to squash?

I continually get these recirculating emails that are completely untrue or, more dangerously half-true. I refer the senders to Snopes.com continuously. ”Please read the truth about this junk you want me to forward.”

To demonstrate just how hard it is to shake a myth, it might surprise you to learn that the whole story about Columbus seeking to prove that the earth was round is the real myth. That’s right! In Columbus’s day, almost everyone knew the earth was round. Still, there’s a good chance that you learned from your history teacher that the church believed the world was flat and that Columbus was defying the church. You were probably shown pictures like the one above that were meant to show how ignorant and fearful the average European was in 1450. It isn’t true. The whole “story” of the flat earth was invented by writers in the early 1800s. Yet the myth they promulgated was taught in schools through most of the twentieth century. Check it out.

Anyway, all of that is to say that trainers and training designers are not immune either. Here are three examples of myths that you might have seen/heard kicked around the training world as the Gospel.

The “Nonverbal Learning is More Powerful Than Words” Myth

When did you last hear that trainee’s understanding from a lecture is derived 7% from the words spoken, 38% from the tonality, and 55% from body language? Or that 93% of communication is non-verbal?

These percentages come from the wrong interpretation of some research done by Prof Albert Mehrabian in 1967. The statement is a myth(!) commonly referred to as Mehrabian’s myth. Google it!

The problem with this myth is that it gets more distorted every time it is repeated. It is used, to cite one example, to support the elimination of bullets in slides. Or to eliminate lecturing. That sort of advice may be good or bad but is not supported by Mehrabian’s research.

Here are some of my favorite links about this myth: The CreativityWorks video is pretty good. And here is an interview with Prof Mehrabian who “cringes” when he hears his work misquoted.

The “Learning Styles” Myth

Do people possess one main learning style? Are some people verbal learners while others are visual learners? During the last few years this concept has been increasingly studied with the science coming down on the side that says- No, people learn from a flexible array of learning gateways.

The best synopsis I have read on this issue looks at some of the research, acknowledges and debunks the criticism, and then suggests that those who choose to persist in believing the learning styles myth are either unaware that it is a myth, or have a stake in the myth (they own a company with learning style testing inventories).

The “You Only Remember 10% of What You Read” Myth

You have heard it many times. You have seen graphs like the one below put up on the screen at conference workshops. Frequently in my experience at eLearning conferences. And the workshop leader points at the projected image and says with passion, “People only remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear….”

Will Thalmeier has researched the history of these bogus statistics and found that they are a “fraud.” Not sure if that is more harsh than “myth” or not. He found a lot of interesting things doing some academic investigative reporting. And in the process Will lays out the challenge for us to build our training on solid evidence of what works.

I think it is important to try our best to build our ideas about what works well in training on what we know to be true. Research is a big help. While I fully disagree that only those with a PhD in training or human performance technology should be trainers (yes I have read professors of learning theory argue to that end) I think we all need to be vigilant and ready to learn.

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