Laura: That mandatory corporate training you just completed? There's a good chance it was a complete waste of time and money. In fact, the 'science' it was based on might be a total myth. Sophia: Ouch. That stings because it feels so true. I can already picture the specific, brightly-colored PowerPoint slides from a training I had to take last month. Are you telling me my suffering was for nothing? Laura: I'm telling you there's a high probability it was. And that's the exact, painful truth at the heart of the book we're diving into today: Evidence-Informed Learning Design by Mirjam Neelen and Paul A. Kirschner. Sophia: Kirschner and Neelen... these aren't just any authors, right? I heard one is a distinguished professor who's been fighting these myths for decades, and the other has been in the trenches at places like Google. They're a powerhouse duo. Laura: Exactly. They're on a mission to stop what they call 'eminence-based' education—where we do things because a guru or a popular blogger said so—and replace it with what the evidence actually shows. And the evidence is often shocking. Sophia: Okay, I'm hooked. It feels like we're about to pull back the curtain on the entire Learning and Development industry. Where do we even start? Laura: We start at the foundation. The book argues that the learning profession is, in many ways, cracked at its very foundation.

Sophia: A cracked foundation? That sounds dramatic. What does that mean in practice? Are we talking about a few wobbly bricks or a building that's about to collapse? Laura: It’s more like a building where the architects are ignoring the blueprints and just going with what feels right. The book makes a powerful case that the entire field of education and workplace training often willfully ignores solid, scientific evidence in favor of ideology, tradition, or just plain old hunches. Sophia: Willfully ignores? That sounds like a conspiracy. I thought people were at least trying to do the right thing. Laura: You'd think so, but the book shares a story that is just jaw-dropping. It’s called Project Follow Through. Back in the 1970s, the US government funded one of the largest-scale educational experiments in history. They wanted to find out the best way to teach disadvantaged kids. Sophia: Okay, a huge experiment, government funding... this sounds like it should have produced some really solid answers. Laura: It did! They tested nine different teaching models across 180 schools with over 70,000 students. Some models were very child-led, based on discovery and constructivism. Others were more structured. One was called Direct Instruction, which was highly scripted, teacher-led, and focused on mastery of foundational skills. Sophia: I'm guessing the trendy, child-led models were the winners? That always seems to be the popular narrative. Laura: That's what the educational establishment at the time believed, and desperately wanted to be true. But the data was unambiguous. For academic achievement, cognitive skills, and even self-esteem, one model blew every other one out of the water: Direct Instruction. It was the clear, undeniable winner. Sophia: Wow. So they found the answer! A scientifically proven way to help the kids who needed it most. That must have changed everything. Laura: It changed nothing. The results were so politically inconvenient, so contrary to the romantic, progressive ideals of the time, that they were essentially buried. The educational community largely ignored the findings and, to this day, the debate between direct teaching and inquiry-based learning rages on, as if we don't have this massive piece of evidence. Sophia: Hold on. They had the answer, and they just... buried it? Because they didn't like it? That's infuriating. Laura: That's the cracked foundation. It's the tendency to value our beliefs over the facts. And the book argues this happens every single day in the corporate world. A stakeholder demands a "fun" or "innovative" training, even when you show them the evidence that a more straightforward approach would be more effective. Sophia: I have lived that exact scenario. I once saw a team spend thousands of dollars on a virtual reality training for a task that could have been taught with a one-page checklist. It was "innovative," but nobody learned anything. Laura: Exactly. We're building on this cracked foundation of ideology and intuition. And when you do that, the whole structure is filled with... well, with myths.

Sophia: Okay, so if we're ignoring good evidence, what bad ideas are we using instead? Let's talk about these myths. The book has a great name for them, right? Laura: It does. It calls them "zombie myths." Because no matter how many times you shoot them in the head with scientific evidence, they just keep coming back. Sophia: I love that. Give me an example of a zombie. I want to meet one. Laura: The book uses a perfect, and painfully real, example. It analyzes a fictional-but-all-too-real article titled 'How to Design Learning Experiences for Millennials.' Sophia: Oh no. I think I've read that exact article. It probably says they have the attention span of a gnat and only communicate through TikTok dances, right? Laura: Pretty much! The article makes all these grand claims: Millennials are 'digital natives' who learn differently. They need hands-on, experiential learning. Video is 80% more effective for them than any other medium. It sounds so specific and authoritative. Sophia: But let me guess... the evidence is non-existent? Laura: Worse than non-existent. The authors apply a simple critical thinking framework to it. They ask: Where's the data? The article cites vague sources like 'Research Centre Y' and 'We Do Research.' The claims are hyped-up and full of emotional language. There's no real science, just a collection of stereotypes packaged as insight. Sophia: And yet, entire training budgets are built on articles just like that. It's a generational stereotype masquerading as learning science. That's definitely a zombie. But what about the big one? The one everyone has heard of? Laura: Ah, you mean the king of all zombie myths. Learning Styles. The idea that you are a 'visual learner,' or an 'auditory learner,' or a 'kinesthetic learner.' Sophia: Okay, now you're coming for me. I am a visual learner! I need diagrams. I need whiteboards. If you just talk at me, my brain checks out. Are you telling me that's not real? Laura: I'm telling you something more nuanced and interesting. Your preference for visual information is absolutely real. You might enjoy it more, you might pay more attention to it. But the core claim of learning styles—that you will learn better if the information is tailored to your preferred style—has been overwhelmingly debunked. There is no solid evidence for it. Sophia: But... why does it feel so true then? Laura: Because the best way to learn something often depends on the content, not the person. If you're learning to tie a knot, you need to see it and do it—everyone is a kinesthetic learner in that context. If you're learning to identify a bird call, you need to hear it—everyone is an auditory learner. The book's point is that pigeon-holing people into these boxes is not only ineffective, it can be harmful. It gives people a fixed mindset, like 'Oh, I can't learn from this lecture because I'm a visual learner.' Sophia: That makes so much sense. It's an excuse. So instead of asking 'what's your learning style?', we should be asking 'what's the best way to teach this specific thing?' Laura: Precisely. We need to stop decorating our training with these myths and start building it with solid, proven ingredients. And that's where the book gets really constructive and, honestly, hopeful.

Sophia: I'm glad to hear there's hope! After the cracked foundation and the zombie apocalypse, I need some good news. What's the fix? Laura: The fix is to think like a master chef. The authors run a blog called '3-Star Learning Experiences,' and they use the analogy of a Michelin-starred meal. A great learning experience, like a great meal, needs to be three things: effective, efficient, and enjoyable. Sophia: I like that. Not just effective, but also efficient—doesn't waste my time—and enjoyable, so I actually want to do it. So what are the secret ingredients in this 3-star kitchen? Laura: There are many, but one of the most powerful and misunderstood is the idea of a 'worked example.' We tend to think that the best way to learn is to just throw people in the deep end and let them figure it out. Problem-based learning, discovery, all that. But for novices, that's incredibly inefficient. Sophia: What is a 'worked example' then? Is it just a boring, step-by-step instruction manual? Laura: It can be, but it can also be something much more profound. The book tells this incredible story to illustrate the power of a good worked example. It’s called 'The Doctor and the General.' Sophia: Okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me the story. Laura: So, a doctor has a patient with a malignant stomach tumor. It's impossible to operate, but they can use a special kind of radiation to destroy it. The problem is, if they fire a ray with enough intensity to kill the tumor, it will also destroy all the healthy tissue it passes through on the way. At lower intensities, it's harmless to the tissue, but it also won't affect the tumor. Sophia: That sounds like an impossible problem. A classic catch-22. Laura: Exactly. The doctor is stumped. Then, over the weekend, she's reading a book and comes across a story about a general trying to capture a fortress. The fortress is in the middle of a country, with many roads leading to it. But the dictator has mined all the roads, so that while small groups of soldiers can pass over them safely, any large force will detonate the mines and be destroyed. Sophia: Another impossible problem. You can't take a fortress with a small group of soldiers. Laura: But the general is brilliant. He divides his army into many small groups and sends each group down a different road. They all march at the same time and converge on the fortress simultaneously. Individually, they're too small to set off the mines, but together, they arrive as a full-strength army and capture the fortress. Sophia: Whoa. Okay, I think I see where this is going. Laura: The doctor reads this, and it clicks. She realizes she can solve her problem the same way. She can aim multiple low-intensity radiation beams at the tumor from many different directions. Each individual beam is too weak to harm the healthy tissue it passes through, but they all converge on the tumor, and their combined energy is enough to destroy it. Sophia: That is brilliant! So the story of the general was a 'worked example' for the doctor's medical problem. It gave her a mental model. Laura: Exactly! It wasn't a step-by-step guide to radiation oncology. It was a story, an analogy, that provided the core principle for solving a complex, non-recurrent problem. That is a high-level worked example. And the book argues that providing learners with these kinds of models, stories, and clear examples is one of the most effective and efficient ways to build expertise. Sophia: That completely reframes it for me. We're not talking about dumbing things down. We're talking about providing elegant solutions that people can adapt and use. It’s about giving them the blueprint, not just the bricks. Laura: And that's just one ingredient. The book is full of them—spaced practice, retrieval, interleaving. It’s a whole cookbook for the mind.

Sophia: Okay, so we've got a cracked foundation, an army of zombie myths, and a 3-star Michelin kitchen full of evidence-based ingredients. When you boil it all down, what's the one big shift this book is asking us, as learners and professionals, to make? Laura: I think it's a shift from being learning decorators to being learning architects. Decorators are obsessed with the surface: fads, fun, flashy technology, and myths like learning styles. They make things look nice. Architects are obsessed with the foundation and the structure. They build on the solid ground of science. Sophia: And that takes a different kind of skill. And maybe a different kind of courage. Laura: That's the perfect word for it. It's about professional courage. The courage to tell a stakeholder that their pet idea is a myth, even if it's unpopular. And the discipline to use what actually works, even if it's less flashy than the latest trend. It’s about taking our profession seriously. Sophia: So for anyone listening, what’s one simple thing they can do tomorrow to start being more of an architect and less of a decorator? Laura: The book gives us the tools, but I think it starts with a question. The next time you're asked to design or take a training, ask one simple thing: 'What's the evidence that this approach actually works?' Just asking that question can start to chip away at the cracked foundation. Sophia: I love that. And for our listeners, we'd love to hear about the wildest learning myths you've encountered in your own workplaces. What's the 'zombie idea' you wish would finally die? Share them with us on our socials, the stories are probably both horrifying and hilarious. Laura: I can't wait to read those. It's a call to arms for all of us to build better. This is Aibrary, signing off.