Various psychological studies have made it clear that every day that goes by we are losing our concentration power! One study concluded we have a shorter attention span than a goldfish! Goldfishes have 9 seconds and us humans coming in with a whopping 8 seconds.

Impressive….

Now, this proposes a challenge to everyone from teachers, guides, marketers, bosses, companies and anyone who is trying to get and keep your attention. Part of the IKO Instructor Course is about human psychology and ways to overcome such challenges.

When an IKO Instructor is teaching someone there is a lot of new information being put out and one must help the student process as well retain to be able to progress, stay safe and learn to kiteboard - this is why the instructor must have the proper know how to properly teach.

Short-term memory is the capacity to remember sensations, words or visual inputs that occurred in the last few minutes. This information is stored in the brain for only a short period of time. It will be lost unless it can be transferred to the long-term memory, where it will be stored and recalled at a later date.

The key to teaching is to help students transfer their newly acquired knowledge from short-term to long-term memory. To help students integrate an action into long-term memory (instead of short-term), they should do the action just learned or carried out, along with their thoughts right after doing it.

Instructors should take the time to obtain students’ feedback right after attempting each exercise as this will help them remember much more (letting them talk by rephrasing and explaining the things they just heard or achieved, and encouraging them do it again is some ways to ingrain the new information and skills).

The whole learning process is stronger if students analyze a skill or situation, and develop an understanding around it. This is much more powerful than just copying a skill, which invariably leads to less memory and skill retention.

Here is a breakdown of how much is actually retained by the student as the training components come together.

Skills attained

Theory + : 10-20%

Demonstration + : 30-35%

Practice + : 60-70%

Feedback + : 70-80%

Coaching :80-90%

Interesting isn’t it!?

Now if your attention span allowed you to finish reading this post congratulations and let us know in the comments below if your memory has ever failed you whilst learning to kiteboard.