Dogs need 100 practice tries to learn new behaviors. Here’s what people require

I relearned a lesson from my dog this week, which makes me think she’s smarter than I am sometimes. And that’s just fine.

During dog obedience training a few years ago, the trainer said that for a dog to learn any new behavior, it would take at least 100 attempts. She was right. Our dog is pretty smart and learned a few actions before the 100 mark, but I never expected it, and thus I wasn’t disappointed if it took 100 trials.

That notion helped me in two ways recently, with tennis and with teaching.

I’ve mentioned that I’m learning to play tennis. Right now, I’m focusing on the serve and am overwhelmed at all there is to learn. Where to place my feet. How to toss the ball in the air. How to position the racquet to meet the ball. How to send it to a specific spot, rather than just “getting the ball over the net.” And more.

As a first step, I toss 100-130 balls in the air each time I go practice. (The key word is “toss,” which does not always result in connection between racquet and ball, please note). Perhaps 20% are “good” tosses, and about 10% make it into the right spot over the net. Not a great percentage but better than Day 1.

And that got me thinking about the dog needing 100 times to learn something new and that I need even more. But more importantly, it made me think about how to use the practice notion to improve my teaching.

In the graduate program where I teach, one of the participants said recently that he didn’t know how to read the assigned material, because he didn’t know if that would be the only time we discuss that topic in class, or if we’d return to it again. He worried that he’d have to learn it all in that one sitting, in case we were not going to revisit.

I think many teachers figure that if a topic is “covered,” it’s finished. I don’t buy that. Like dogs and people learning tennis, I think we need more practice than we likely expect to learn concepts and ideas.

It not only helps to imprint the knowledge in our brains, but it can also help people develop their own ways of thinking about some idea, just as we develop our own ways of serving a tennis ball.

For instance, in the classroom, we talk about organizational culture many times throughout the two years of the program. Since senior leaders spend loads of time talking about how they could build, maintain and strengthen culture, why not give more time in the classroom, “practicing” our thinking about the topic? More time, better results.

Just like learning to serve in tennis.

Nancy Napier is a distinguished professor at Boise State University in Idaho. nnapier@boisestate.edu. She is co-author of “The Bridge Generation of Vietnam: Spanning Wartime to Boomtime.”