Phases of Learning

Acquisition

Acquisition is the period during which an individual learns how to perform the skill or develops a basic understanding of the target knowledge. By definition, at the beginning of acquisition, learners are uncertain concerning at least some aspects of the knowledge or skill and will be at least partially ineffective in judging the quality or accuracy of their own understanding or performance. Therefore, the most important elements of the learning environment during acquisition involve the manner in which information is provided to the learner (e.g., guidance, modeling, demonstrations, corrective feedback).

Fluency Building

Fluency building is the phase of learning in which the learner develops the ability to demonstrate knowledge or skill easily. Most knowledge and skill proves useful only after some facility or fluency has been achieved in its demonstration. Accuracy alone in the demonstration of knowledge or skill is a relatively poor predictor of endurance, maintenance, retention, or voluntary application within untrained situations. Time-based measures of performance (e.g., rate, frequency, latency, duration) predict those outcomes rather well. However, the level of fluency that will prove useful to a learner is often idiosyncratic—dependent on the relative fluency of alternative behaviors within the learner's repertoire that might achieve the same functional outcomes or special circumstances under which the skill or knowledge must be demonstrated.

Fluency with knowledge or a skill is developed primarily through repetition and practice. Unfortunately, repeating the demonstration of knowledge or a skill over and over again is often not intrinsically reinforcing. During this phase of learning, therefore, effective extrinsic systems of reinforcement and motivation should be employed, and appropriate establishing operations should be constructed.

Application

Application refers to the use of previously developed knowledge or skills in untrained situations (stimulus generalization). Even skills developed to a high level of accuracy and fluency might not be applied spontaneously outside the instructional context. Special instructional strategies are often required to ensure those outcomes. Generally, those strategies expose the learner to multiple exemplars of the stimuli and situations where the knowledge or skill would prove useful. The best of those strategies (e.g., general case programming) seek to systematically sample those exemplars from a defined “universe” of situations in which the knowledge or skill should be applied, along with a representative sample of nonexemplars (contrasting situations in which the behavior should not be applied) and common but functionally irrelevant stimuli (i.e., stimuli that should be irrelevant to the successful application of the knowledge or skill but that might inappropriately come to control the behavior).

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