"What little Hans does not learn..." – The myth of learning in old age

March 2, 2020

"What little Hans does not learn..." – The myth of learning in old age

Tip of the Week

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“Learning becomes increasingly difficult with age” – Myth or Truth? We answer this question in the article and show you how learning in the work context can be made easier at any age with certain tricks.

Whether at work or in everyday life: Older people often encounter the prejudice that they can no longer learn new things as quickly. When an older employee makes a mistake, it is often attributed to their age. We discuss in this article why that is not true.

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Learning is always possible

Learning researcher Christian Stamov Roßnagel from the University of Bremen explains in an interview with Zeit what the reality looks like:

"Often, older people even surpass younger ones because they can integrate new information into their larger existing knowledge more easily."

Stamov Roßnagel also has an explanation for this myth: Many older people signal that learning at their age is impossible and continually find excuses for why they cannot learn anything new. Thus, it is not about the ability but rather about motivation!

This illustrates that the assumption “Older people can learn worse” is a misunderstanding – unfortunately, this leads to discrimination against older employees in many workplaces:

"The ability to learn does not actually decrease, at most the speed of learning may decline somewhat. However, even among 70-year-olds, the differences compared to younger people are often so small that there is no reason to assign older employees other, rather insignificant tasks."

There are still some tricks to make learning easier and faster in old age. With enough time, older learners can quickly overtake younger ones – because they have one decisive advantage: experience.

"The broader, more comprehensive, and more complicated the challenges are, the smaller the differences between older and younger individuals."

This is how learning works for older employees

Now we come to the tips for easy learning in older age! Naturally, these tricks also help young learners, but they are particularly important for older employees:

5 tips that ease the learning process for both old AND young:

Learning must happen regularly and should ideally be integrated into everyday life or the working day.
The motivation to learn among older employees is often not as high as it is for younger ones: Set partial or milestone goals to keep motivation in the long term.
Draw on existing knowledge and experience and link new learning content to already established topics.
It has always been said in school: “Write it down, you will remember it better” – in this sense: Have your employees take notes.
Repetitions and variations in the learning process help with particularly complex content.

Flashcards as support – this also works digitally

Flashcards remain a popular tool to aid in self-learning – even in older age, they work very well. However, they do not always have to be in paper form, as they can now also be created digitally.

Many companies, academies, and trainers use digital learning platforms or Learning Management Systems (LMS) like blink.it. In such systems, you can create small learning units in the style of flashcards. The above illustration shows what that looks like in the blink.it learning platform. The advantage: Your employees are not dependent on physical cards but can access learning content online anytime and anywhere.

Such small learning units in a microlearning style can further support learning in older age. If you use different media formats and repeat content multiple times, you can significantly facilitate the learning process for older employees.

We hope this article has provided you with useful information and wish you much success with your online courses for all age groups!