Your learners are satisfied. They report having made progress. But what did they actually retain? To answer this question, we ran a randomised study comparing three pedagogical formats on the same content. The results confirm what cognitive science predicted, and reveal what your usual indicators do not tell you.
The methodology of our randomised impact study
In a previous article on the counter-intuitive lessons on adult learning, we detailed the full methodology of our impact study. Here are the main points.
About sixty participants who were not Didask users were recruited via a professional panel and randomly assigned to one of the three pedagogical formats below, with rigorous controls to guarantee their real engagement throughout the path.
All of them followed the same content on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, in three different formats.
- Group 1, the classic LMS: an existing course on a market LMS. Pleasant design, well-presented content, but few engaging exercises, limited feedback, and poorly structured information with no concrete role-play.
- Group 2, the top-down format: a video covering exactly the same content, with no interaction. The most passive format possible.
- Group 3, the Didask format: the same content, restructured according to our pedagogical principles. Frequent exercises with immediate feedback, accounting for the most common cognitive biases, role-plays with personalised feedback.
We then measured four dimensions: learner satisfaction, their feeling of upskilling, their actual memorisation and their ability to conceptualise and apply the notions learned.
The result that confirms our intuition: Didask enables better memorisation of information
We knew it in theory: our pedagogical principles, anchored in the recommendations of cognitive science, should produce better memorisation. Now we have the figures to prove it.
The group that followed the Didask training achieves the best results: 60% correct answers, against 50% for the classic LMS group and 40% for the video group. A difference that is not the result of chance, it is statistically significant (F(2, 57) = 3.41, p = 0.040).
By analysing the questions where Didask outperformed the most, two explanatory factors stand out.
First, the structuring and sequencing of information. Videos, even well designed, tend to present a lot of information in a continuous flow. In the Didask format, each key notion has its own space, which reduces cognitive load and facilitates encoding into long-term memory. This is precisely what research on cognitive load recommends: breaking information into assimilable units rather than drowning it in a dense flow (Sweller, 1988; Mayer & Moreno, 2003).
Second, the active engagement of learners. Rather than passively receiving information, Didask learners had to anticipate, infer, answer, before receiving feedback. This mechanism corresponds to what cognitive science calls the testing effect: actively recalling a piece of information strengthens its memory trace far more than rereading or passively listening to it (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Studies have repeatedly shown that exercises interspersed throughout a learning process produce better results than a single test at the end (Kornell & Bjork, 2008).
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Good to know
Learners trained with Didask achieve 60% correct answers on memorisation, against 40% for those who followed a video, even an engaging one, even on a subject perceived as attractive. The pedagogical format matters. The data proves it.
High satisfaction, strong confidence... and yet
As we explained in our previous article, relying solely on satisfaction or perceived upskilling would never have revealed the Didask advantage. All three groups showed similar satisfaction around 4/5 and equivalent confidence in their ability to apply the concepts learned. The correlations between these subjective indicators and actual memorisation performance ranged between 0.11 and 0.18. In other words, very weak.
Learners were poor judges of their own learning. Only the objective measurement of memorisation made it possible to reveal what the pedagogical format really changes.
What these results show about the Didask format
The data is clear: the Didask format produces better memorisation than passive formats, video or classic course. And this advantage is not accidental. It is the direct consequence of pedagogical principles built on cognitive science.
Frequent exercises interspersed throughout the path, immediate feedback after each attempt, fine-grained sequencing of information, concrete role-plays: every design choice in Didask responds to a documented cognitive mechanism. The result is that Didask learners do not passively consume content, they actively confront it, and their brain encodes better.
This is what the data confirms. And it is precisely why Didask exists: to turn every training into a truly effective learning experience, measurable, and durably anchored.
Do not measure only what is easy to measure
One final lesson from this study deserves to be highlighted, and it applies to the entire training industry.
Satisfaction and the feeling of upskilling are simple indicators to collect. But our study demonstrates it: they do not predict what learners actually retain. Relying solely on these subjective statements means steering your training blind.
Measuring effective memorisation, that is, what learners are able to recall after the training, is the only way to honestly assess the impact of a pedagogical system. It is a higher requirement. It is also the one that really counts.
What's next?
Our study does not stop at memorisation. In the next articles, we will address Didask's impact on the ability to genuinely put knowledge into practice. With, here again, results that challenge our certainties about what "learning well" really means.
Book a demo to see how Didask concretely transforms the impact of your training.
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