The spaced practice effect: what it is and how to leverage it
This is part 5 in a series on what we know about how we learn and how this knowledge should inform how we teach. The series is intended for teachers, students, and developers of education technology who want to be more informed about how learning works. Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Most people in the U.S. will spend at least 12 years in school. Many will spend far more. How much of all that will we remember?
Not much. And one of the reasons is that we don’t tend to practice in a way that produces long-term learning. “Cramming” is one example of poor practice. Many teachers (and many students) acknowledge that cramming is a bad idea. And yet, the basic set-up of many educational environments encourage cramming. In other words, they encourage a lot of study on a single topic, bunched up in a short amount of time.
Law school is a textbook example: in nearly every law school course, students take a single final exam that determines their entire grade for the course. Are students going to cram? You bet they are. A few weeks before the exam, students trade course outlines, and furiously create outlines of their own that try to synthesize all of the material. Then they take the exam, writing as feverishly as they can to explore all of the issues on each question.
