THE CONCEPT OF LEARNING CURVE

Learning curve is a term commonly used to determine how long it takes for a learner to acquire a knowledge, attitude, or motor skill. To understand the learning curve concept as it relates to the process of teaching and learning. One must refer to educational psychology literature. The learning curve has been described as basically nothing more than a graphic depiction of changes in performance or output during a specified time period (McCray 8t Blakemore, 1985). A learning curve shows the relationship between practice and performance of some type of a skill. It provides a concrete measure of the rate at which a person learns a task. Cronbach (I963) defined a learning curve specifically as it relates to psychomotor skill development as “a record of an individual's improvement made by measuring his ability at different stages of practice and plotting his scores" (p. 297).

According to Cronbach (I963), the learning curve theory is divided into six stages (see Figure 10-2):

1. Negligible progress: This “pre—readiness" period is when the learner is not ready to perform the entire task, but learning is taking place, such as developing attention, manipulation, and perceptual skills. This period can be relatively long in young children who are developing physical and cognitive abilities and in older adults who may have difficulty in making key discriminations.
2. Increasing Gain: Rapid gains in learning occur as the learner grasps the essentials of the task. Scores rise rapidly as the learner becomes aware of cues to attend to, goals to attain, or ways to effectively organize responses. Motivation to perform a skill increases when the learner has interest in the task,  receives approval from others or experiences a sense of pride in discovering the ability to perform.
3. Decreasing gains: In this period the rate of improvement in mastering a task slows down and additional practice does not produce much, if any, gains. Learning occurs in smaller increments as the learner incorporates changes by using cues to smooth out performance.
4. Plateau: No substantial gains are made. This “leveling of?’ period is characterized by a small rate of progress in performance. During this stage, the learner is making minor adjust-menu in mastering a skill. However, the belief that this is a “period of no progress" is considered false. Gains in skills can occur even though overall performance scores remain stable.
5. Renewed gains: During this period, additional progress can be made after the plateau period has ended. If gains occur, they are usually due to growth in physical development, renewed interest in the task, a response to a challenge, or the drive for perfection.
6. Approach to limit: Progress at this point becomes negligible. The ability to perform has reached its potential. The “limit” is a hypothetical stage only because there is never certainty that a learner cannot improve further.

Typical Learning Curve

Typical Learning Curve with educational implications

Learning process is not always similar. There is more progress in sometimes, sometimes less and sometime absolutely nil. So, we cannot find out the rate of learning. But, psychologists have attempted to measure the progress in learning. They described the progress in learning by drawing a line on the graph paper. This line is curve, and not straight. So, it is called Learning curve.

The first person to describe the learning curve was Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885. He found that the time required memorizing a nonsense syllable increased sharply as the number of syllables increased. Psychologist, Arthur Bills gave a more detailed description of learning curves in 1934. He also discussed the properties of different types of learning curves, such as negative acceleration, positive acceleration, plateaus.

DEFINITION

• According to Skinner, a learning curve is a progress representation of person’s improvement or lack of improvement in a given activity.
• Raimers et.al defined the learning curve as a method of partial learning of a given activity.
• A learning curve is a graphical representation of how learning takes place in a particular situation – S.K.Mangal.
• Learning curve refers to the graphical relationship between the amount of learning and the time it takes to learn.

In the learning curve there are two scales: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal scale is called x-axis and the vertical scale is called y-axis. For drawing the learning graphs we divided the horizontal scale (x-axis) into units of time or the numbers of trials required for learning and the vertical scale (y-axis) into units of achievement, material studied or problem solved, etc.

STAGES

Normally learning curve comprises of four stages.

• Initial stage- It is also called lad phase. In lag phase the learning is merely zero for first few practices.
• Steep up stage- This is the second stage. It is also called log or exponential phase. In this stage the learning is suddenly increased and rate of improvement is substantial.
• Intermediate stage-
• It is also called Stationary Phase. Now, there is no progress in learning or improvement is arrested. So, it is called Plateau. Skinner says ‘a plateau is a horizontal stretch indicative of apparent progress’. It places an important role in learning process because when such a stage is reached, a learning curve becomes almost flat.

Reasons for plateau in learning-

• Poor or faulty method of learning.
• Physical and mental fatigue or boredom
• Too much difficulty or complexity of the learning material
• Lack of proper motivation and loss of interest of the learner
• Poor and unfavorable environment
• Distraction and inattention of the learner
• Satisfaction of the learner with moderate achievement
• Final stage- This is the final stage. Here the learner has reach the maximum limit of the improvement.

 

Types of curves-

There are three types of learning curve based on the units which plotted.

• Concave curve- This learning curve is also called positively accelerated curve. It depicts slow initial improvement in learning that increases with time leading towards the mastery of learning materials. At the initial the rate of progress may be slower, but at the final the learning rate increases noticeably. This learning curve is often occurring in the learning situation. Here the task may be new one or difficult one to the student at the beginning. But with the increasing practice he is mastery over that at the end.
• Convex curve- This learning curve is also called negatively accelerated curve. It depicts rapid initial improvement in learning that decreases with time. At the initial the rate of progress maybe faster, but at the final the learning rate slows down noticeably. This learning curve is occurring in the learning situations where the task is simple or learner has had previous practice on a similar task.
• Concave and convex curve- The third curve involves the combination of the first two concave and convex curves, is known as Concave-Convex Curve. It looks like an English letter ‘S’. So called S-shaped curve. In the beginning this is depending upon the nature of the learner, learning material and the learning environment. It is normally obtained where the situation the learner study the entire learning from zero performance to its mastery.

Characteristics of learning curve

• There is an initial improvement whether it is slow or rapid.
• No stage learning progress is uniform. There are various ups and downs (spurts) in the learning curve even a general acceleration is recorded.
• In between the beginning and end of the learning curve, there is no improvement in learning is called plateau (flat or stationary stage).
• At the final stage in the learning curve, we can find whether there is any little learning or no learning takes place.
• After reaching the stationary stage or plateau the learning curve again shows some improvement with spurts.

Educational implications

• The teacher should keep in his mind the individual differences of the learners.
• The teacher has to choose or use proper method of teaching and techniques and environment by the guidance of the learning curves of his students.
• The students may acquaint with their own progress in learning. It can give them the opportunity of self-appraisal.
• The unusual spurt reveals about the fatigue, poor motivation, poor method of teaching and other personality characters of the learner. The teacher can make use of his knowledge in studying the behaviour of the student and eliminate the plateau.

Efficient methods creating interest, making aware of the goals, moving simple to complex, providing motivation, minimizing the distraction factors are used to eliminate the plateau.

Typical Learning Curve

Typical Learning Curve with educational implications

Learning process is not always similar. There is more progress in sometimes, sometimes less and sometime absolutely nil. So, we cannot find out the rate of learning. But, psychologists have attempted to measure the progress in learning. They described the progress in learning by drawing a line on the graph paper. This line is curve, and not straight. So, it is called Learning curve.

The first person to describe the learning curve was Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885. He found that the time required memorizing a nonsense syllable increased sharply as the number of syllables increased. Psychologist, Arthur Bills gave a more detailed description of learning curves in 1934. He also discussed the properties of different types of learning curves, such as negative acceleration, positive acceleration, plateaus.

DEFINITION

• According to Skinner, a learning curve is a progress representation of person’s improvement or lack of improvement in a given activity.
• Raimers et.al defined the learning curve as a method of partial learning of a given activity.
• A learning curve is a graphical representation of how learning takes place in a particular situation – S.K.Mangal.
• Learning curve refers to the graphical relationship between the amount of learning and the time it takes to learn.

In the learning curve there are two scales: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal scale is called x-axis and the vertical scale is called y-axis. For drawing the learning graphs we divided the horizontal scale (x-axis) into units of time or the numbers of trials required for learning and the vertical scale (y-axis) into units of achievement, material studied or problem solved, etc.

STAGES

Normally learning curve comprises of four stages.

• Initial stage- It is also called lad phase. In lag phase the learning is merely zero for first few practices.
• Steep up stage- This is the second stage. It is also called log or exponential phase. In this stage the learning is suddenly increased and rate of improvement is substantial.
• Intermediate stage-
• It is also called Stationary Phase. Now, there is no progress in learning or improvement is arrested. So, it is called Plateau. Skinner says ‘a plateau is a horizontal stretch indicative of apparent progress’. It places an important role in learning process because when such a stage is reached, a learning curve becomes almost flat.

Reasons for plateau in learning-

• Poor or faulty method of learning.
• Physical and mental fatigue or boredom
• Too much difficulty or complexity of the learning material
• Lack of proper motivation and loss of interest of the learner
• Poor and unfavorable environment
• Distraction and inattention of the learner
• Satisfaction of the learner with moderate achievement
• Final stage- This is the final stage. Here the learner has reach the maximum limit of the improvement.

 

Types of curves-

There are three types of learning curve based on the units which plotted.

• Concave curve- This learning curve is also called positively accelerated curve. It depicts slow initial improvement in learning that increases with time leading towards the mastery of learning materials. At the initial the rate of progress may be slower, but at the final the learning rate increases noticeably. This learning curve is often occurring in the learning situation. Here the task may be new one or difficult one to the student at the beginning. But with the increasing practice he is mastery over that at the end.
• Convex curve- This learning curve is also called negatively accelerated curve. It depicts rapid initial improvement in learning that decreases with time. At the initial the rate of progress maybe faster, but at the final the learning rate slows down noticeably. This learning curve is occurring in the learning situations where the task is simple or learner has had previous practice on a similar task.
• Concave and convex curve- The third curve involves the combination of the first two concave and convex curves, is known as Concave-Convex Curve. It looks like an English letter ‘S’. So called S-shaped curve. In the beginning this is depending upon the nature of the learner, learning material and the learning environment. It is normally obtained where the situation the learner study the entire learning from zero performance to its mastery.

Characteristics of learning curve

• There is an initial improvement whether it is slow or rapid.
• No stage learning progress is uniform. There are various ups and downs (spurts) in the learning curve even a general acceleration is recorded.
• In between the beginning and end of the learning curve, there is no improvement in learning is called plateau (flat or stationary stage).
• At the final stage in the learning curve, we can find whether there is any little learning or no learning takes place.
• After reaching the stationary stage or plateau the learning curve again shows some improvement with spurts.

Educational implications

• The teacher should keep in his mind the individual differences of the learners.
• The teacher has to choose or use proper method of teaching and techniques and environment by the guidance of the learning curves of his students.
• The students may acquaint with their own progress in learning. It can give them the opportunity of self-appraisal.
• The unusual spurt reveals about the fatigue, poor motivation, poor method of teaching and other personality characters of the learner. The teacher can make use of his knowledge in studying the behaviour of the student and eliminate the plateau.

Efficient methods creating interest, making aware of the goals, moving simple to complex, providing motivation, minimizing the distraction factors are used to eliminate the plateau.

Reference

• https://books.google.co.in/booksid=hyCLMdheGmwC&pg=PA312&lpg=PA312&dq=learning+curve+in+educational+psychology&source=bl&ots=PGer-kN3rx&sig=d8uWiFRovp0_wj6T1-Uf19Y5dNQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIm-by4bHPAhXDs48KHWIjAkAQ6AEIczAR#v=onepage&q&f=false
• http://www.psychologydiscussion.net/learning/learning-meaning-nature-types-and-theories-of-learning/652
• http://salpro.salpaus.fi/tes/CD-rom/pdf/A1_Salpaus_formal_informal_nonformal_learning.docx.pdf
• http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/recognitionofnon-formalandinformallearning-home.htm
• http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-learning-curve/https://books.google.co.in/booksid=DhBu3692uO4C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=learning+curve+in+educational+psychology&source=bl&ots=FBkSA8JLlf&sig=QxE7uSl-T5NFsItFMJ5I2_g1eCo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIm-by4bHPAhXDs48KHWIjAkAQ6AEIYjAO#v=onepage&q=learning%20curve%20in%20educational%20psychology&f=false