Education Shortform
Interleaving
In a nutshell…
Interleaving is a less common term than the others I have posted about lately, but it is a hot topic in education today.
As with distributed practice, it involves a manipulation of the order and timing of tasks in a way which boosts learning and transfer. Essentially interleaving means mixing together different types of tasks or problems.
For example, if a student completes a set of ten questions, a ‘blocked’ arrangement would be for these to all be on the same sub-topic or learning point, while an ‘interleaved’ arrangement would include a mixture of several different types of item.
The example below show how two species of bird could be presented to learners via either blocked or interleaved examples:
Interleaving makes it easier for learners to compare and contrast items, and is especially helpful with concepts which are easily confused. That is, issues where differences are subtle.
Teachers can implement interleaving by mixing together different concepts through reading or projects.
Indeed, everyday life is usually interleaved!
This may help to explain why interleaving is advantageous — it is literally the natural order of things (read more).
However in education, there is often an assumption that we should make things simpler by neatly categorising concepts into particular activities or lessons.
Perhaps we should, instead, let a bit of chaos reign…
Read my recent journal article about spacing and interleaving here.
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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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