The back of most shampoo bottles often tells us to do something most of us don't have time to do. Repeat. Repetition is key for other things as well, such as learning new concepts. When I am on the student's side of the desk I learn best when the same or similar material is presented to me in more than one way through a training. I recently attended a training on Jira, a project management tool that I am using at work to organize projects with vendors who build our web-based products. We will also use it for bug tracking, which is a huge improvement over sending e-mail and copying everyone involved in the project, creating an information glut most of us want to avoid. Now, we enter information into the web-based tool, assign tasks, and provide notes for reference and to create a public history. The instructor started out by providing an introduction of the product using a slide presentation, and then before we could even think of getting bored, she switched gears. She reinforced what we had just learned by opening up the product and showing us the areas of the system that we would use on a day to day business. (Note: What she did not do was show us every single facet of the program, which would be too much, and for many of us, not relevant). This was a brief training, but if we had more time, hands-on use of the system, during the training, would have been helpful. This system is pretty straightforward, and for a system that is more complicated to use this may have been necessary, but not in this case. We were sent away with our user names and passwords and were ready to use the system. If only everything was that simple! Reinforced learning is really helpful for a roomful of people who all have different learning styles too. The group can reconvene at a later date, review what we learned and talk more about how to use if for our specific projects.