The Neuroscience Behind Training That Sticks

An organization has developed a year-long onboarding program for its new instructional designers. The first sessions cover company policies, technology, and organizational values. Over the following months, employees receive training on design models, feedback, collaboration, and project management. Every topic has a place on the calendar.

But look at how those topics are arranged. Nearly every subject appears once. Employees attend a session on feedback, for example, and then move on to something else. The program provides no planned opportunity to revisit the topic, practice in a new situation, or determine how much employees remember several weeks later.

The schedule accounts for what employees need to learn, but gives little attention to how they will retain and apply that knowledge. Research shows that memory can be strengthened by having learners recall information after some time has passed. Mixing different types of problems during practice can also help learners recognize when and how to apply what they've learned. These findings provide the basis for three well-established learning strategies: retrieval practice, spacing, and interleaving.

Incorporating these strategies into a training program requires planning beyond individual sessions. Designers need to consider when learners will revisit a topic, how they will practice it in different contexts, and where they will demonstrate what they remember. Visual mapping provides a way to examine those relationships across an entire program.

Why Returning to Learning Helps

People are not particularly good at judging how much they have learned. A training session can feel productive as learners work through examples and become more comfortable with the material. But that sense of progress doesn't always reflect how much they have learned or how well they will perform later.¹

Research suggests two ways to address this problem. Spacing brings learners back to important material after an interval. Retrieval practice asks them to recall what they learned before seeing it again. Both can improve long-term retention, and they can be combined.²

When learners return to a subject weeks later, remembering may take more effort. The examples and prompts that supported them during the original session are no longer fresh. Trying to recall that information can strengthen memory and reveal gaps in understanding. When learners struggle, feedback helps them correct mistakes and prepare for another attempt.²

Consider the year-long onboarding program. New instructional designers could return to constructive feedback several weeks after their first workshop. Rather than watching the original presentation again, they would review a sample course and write feedback based on what they remember. They could then compare their responses with the original framework and discuss what they missed. The activity combines spacing with retrieval while giving employees practice applying the principles to their work.

Interleaving Changes How Learners Practice

In training, practice exercises are often grouped by topic. Learners work through several examples of the same type of problem before moving to the next. This helps them concentrate on a new skill, but it also tells them what kind of problem to expect. On the job, learners must identify the problem they’re facing before deciding how to respond.

One way to prepare learners for these decisions is through interleaving, or mixing different but related types of problems during practice. Because the appropriate response changes from one exercise to the next, learners must consider which approach fits each situation. Research suggests that interleaving can be particularly helpful when learners need to distinguish among similar concepts.³

In our onboarding program, new instructional designers might begin by reviewing several assignments with unclear directions. Later exercises could mix those examples with assignments that lack clear grading criteria or online quizzes that provide little useful feedback. Employees would need to identify each problem and decide what recommendations to make to the course developer.

Grouping similar examples can help employees learn a new concept or procedure. As they become more familiar with the material, mixing different kinds of problems gives them practice making the judgments they'll need when reviewing actual courses.

From Learning Strategies to Learning Design

Applying spacing, retrieval practice, and interleaving across a long-term onboarding sequence requires more than adding exercises to individual training sessions. Designers must consider when learners should return to important topics, how later activities should build on earlier ones, and where employees will demonstrate what they've learned.

A training calendar shows when activities are scheduled, but it can be difficult to see how those activities relate to one another. A program might include a feedback workshop in February, a peer review in June, and a project evaluation in October. Whether those activities build on one another depends on what employees are asked to do and how the activities are designed.

Working memory limits how much information we can actively hold and process at one time.⁴ Putting the program's structure into a visual map reduces some of that demand, a process known as cognitive offloading.⁵ A map allows the design team to examine activities together, follow a topic across several months, and identify gaps or unnecessary repetition.

Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) map of a year-long instructional designer onboarding program showing learning activities, practice, feedback, and assessments across four quarters.

At LX Studio, we use Learning Environment Modeling® (LEM) to create these maps. LEM represents learning experiences through five building blocks: Information, Dialogue, Practice, Evidence, and Feedback. Each block has a distinct visual identity, allowing designers to see how different types of activities are distributed throughout a program.

For example, a map might reveal that employees receive considerable information about giving feedback but have few opportunities to practice the skill or demonstrate their proficiency. Designers can examine where those opportunities belong and how they might connect with other activities already in the program.

The map gives the design team a shared representation of the learning experience. Instead of considering each training event separately, designers can examine how the activities work together across the year.

Remapping a Year of Onboarding

Here's how our year-long onboarding example might change when designers examine the entire program on a visual map. On the calendar, company policies, technology, design models, feedback, and project management each appear as one-time information sessions. Mapping those activities reveals how heavily the original schedule relies on delivering information, with few opportunities for employees to practice or revisit what they've learned.

In the redesigned program, employees still receive essential information about benefits, payroll, and policies when they start. Designers also introduce discussions about company values, technology, and teamwork early in the year. Company values return each quarter, giving employees opportunities to discuss how those values relate to situations they've encountered at work.

As employees gain experience, the activities become more practical. During the second quarter, they begin applying design models and giving feedback in workplace scenarios. Later activities connect collaboration with technology, feedback, and project management. By the end of the year, employees receive feedback on how they're managing their projects and consider their next steps professionally. Growth inventories in the second and fourth quarters give employees opportunities to demonstrate their developing skills and identify areas for improvement.

The visual map allows designers to follow these activities across the year. They can see where employees first encounter a topic, where they return to it, and what they're expected to do differently as their experience grows. The different LEM blocks also distinguish between receiving information, discussing ideas, practicing skills, receiving feedback, and demonstrating learning. Designers can use those relationships to evaluate whether the training provides enough opportunities for employees to develop and apply what they've learned.

Designing for Learning That Lasts

The redesigned onboarding program covers much the same material as the original, but gives employees repeated opportunities to recall, practice, and apply what they've learned as their responsibilities change. Examining the entire learning experience helps designers identify where those opportunities are missing and make better decisions about how learning develops over time.

If you're looking to improve an existing training program, LX Studio can help your team map the learning experience and identify opportunities for improvement. Contact the LX Studio team to discuss your program.

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Sources

¹ Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”? Psychological Science, 19(6), 585–592. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x

² Carpenter, S. K., Pan, S. C., & Butler, A. C. (2022). The science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 496–511. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00089-1

³ Firth, J., Rivers, I., & Boyle, J. (2021). A systematic review of interleaving as a concept learning strategy. Review of Education, 9(2), 642–684. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3266

⁴ Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87–114. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01003922

⁵ Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002

Note: The year-long instructional designer onboarding example is adapted from Trevor Cox’s article, “Interleaving for Impact: A Neuroscience-Informed Learning Strategy,” published in Training Industry (Summer 2026). The accompanying Learning Environment Modeling® (LEM) map was developed by LX Studio for this article.

AI Use Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of generative AI for drafting, refinement, and editorial support. The author reviewed, revised, and vetted the content and takes responsibility for the accuracy, conclusions, and final published version.