There is also a four-phase learning cycle.

According to Dave Meier, in The Accelerated Learning Handbook, here is what the cycle encompasses:

Preparation: Arousing Interest Presentation: Encountering the New Knowledge or Skills Practice: Integrating the New Knowledge or Skills Performance: Applying the New Knowledge and Skills

1. Preparation: Arousing Interest

Adult learners need to be ready to engage in the learning process. Barriers are created when learners lack interest, don’t see the benefit of learning, or have negative feelings about either the learning or the content.

The goal of the Preparation Phase is to give them positive feelings about the learning experience, and put them into an optimal state for learning. These are some ways to do this:

• Arouse the learners’ curiosity by having them raise questions and pose problems for each other.
• Create a positive social environment incorporating collaborative activities
• Create a learning community by having everyone select and change learning partners throughout the program.
• Have learners define their main goals in attending the program and have them share them with other participants.
• Give each team a course objective and have them come up with as many benefits for that objective as they can.
• Remove learning barriers by having people write down their own barriers and, in teams, coming up with solutions for overcoming them.
• Provide positive suggestions by having a display of success stories of previous attendees.

2. Presentation: Encountering the New Knowledge or Skills

Unless adult learners are integrally involved in creating and adapting their own learning content, they don’t learn. They need to initially encounter the new knowledge and skills in ways that are meaningful to them, and incorporating their own learning style, whether visual, auditory, intellectual, or kinesthetic.

The goal of the Presentation Phase is to help the learners encounter the new material in ways that are interesting, enjoyable, relevant, multisensory, and that appeal to all learning styles.

Here are some examples:

• Collaborative pretests and knowledge sharing
• Interactive presentations
• Variety to appeal to all learning styles
• Partner- and team-based learning projects
• Discovery exercises (personal, partnered, team-based)
• Real-world, contextual learning experiences
• Problem-solving exercises

Practice: Integrating the New Knowledge or Skills

Knowledge is not something a learner absorbs. It is something a learner creates, and it needs time for integration. Learners need to be given time to integrate the new knowledge and skills into their internal structure of self, meaning, beliefs, and skills.

The goal of the Practice Phase is to help learners integrate and incorporate the new knowledge or skill in a variety of ways:

• Hands-on trial/feedback/reflection/retrial
• Real-world simulations
• Learning games
• Action learning exercises
• Individual reflection and articulation
• Partner and team-based dialog
• Skill building practice activities

Performance: Applying the New Knowledge and Skills

Learners need to have the opportunity to immediately apply what they’ve learned. Without immediate application to the real world, only 5% of the newly learned knowledge and skills is retained. With immediate application—and the proper coaching and support—learners typically retain 90% of the new knowledge and skills.

The goal of the Performance Phase is to help learners apply and extend their new knowledge or skill to the real world. This phase ensures integration of learning into the job as well as continuous performance improvement. These are some approaches:

• Immediate real world application
• Creating and executing action plans
• Follow through reinforcement activities
• Post session reinforcement materials
• Ongoing coaching
• Performance evaluation and feedback
• Peer support activities