Education Shortform
Distributed Practice
Or: the spacing effect. In a nutshell.
Distributed practice is an evidence-based technique that applies to learning in all subjects and settings.
It is also known as the ‘spacing effect’.
The basic principle relates to when learning and practice occur. According to the principle of distributed practice, sessions should be spaced out as widely as possible over time.
To put it another way, if you study something today, you should delay any review of the new material by at least a few days — longer if possible.
Distributed practice can be easily applied by teachers to their classes. For example, they could reviews until the following week rather than going over things at the end of the same lesson. Homework assignments could be pushed back until a few weeks after when a concept is first covered (at last — a good excuse for putting off extra marking!).
If you are trying to learning something independently, you will get better results for the same time investment if you split longer study sessions across multiple days. It could help with exam revision, learning a language, or even with trying to remember people’s names.
It can really apply to any type of learning!
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This is one of a series of shortform education articles. You can download a simplified summary of my ‘A–Z of Educational concepts’ here.
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