Rapid Learning in Frontline Grocery Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Prolonged stress and the need for rapid uptake of information can have detrimental effects on memory and cognition, whereas meaningfulness of study material and motivation to learn can have positive effects. How do these opposing conditions impact workplace learning in essential frontline workers during a global pandemic? We analyzed learning data collected longitudinally since before the pandemic in over 85,000 essential frontline grocery workers and nonessential telecommunications workers via a learning management system that incorporates a spaced retrieval schedule, where items are retrieved following retention intervals of varying length. Findings indicate more rapid knowledge uptake in grocery workers (a) during than before the pandemic, (b) for COVID-19-related content than non-COVID content, and (c) in the United States than in Canada. Longer-term maintenance of training material was similar across groups. Evidence of enhanced workplace learning and retention supports efforts to integrate empirically based strategies from the behavioral sciences into learning-based technologies.