Edu-Snippets

Learning benefits of retrieval practice, spaced practice, and interleaving

Highlights:

• Retrieval practice is a simple instructional activity that has been shown to significantly improve student retention of previously learned material. New research has found that students with both high and low levels of prior knowledge benefit from retrieval practice activities.

• Spaced study sessions has been shown to be more effective than massed study sessions for fostering long term recall. Similarly, interleaving (i.e., practicing a mix of concepts within a single study session) has been shown to be more effective than practicing one concept extensively before moving to the next.

• When studying, undergraduate students often don’t recognize the benefits of spacing and interleaving. Explicit instruction in these techniques may help them improve the effectiveness of their studying.

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Retrieval practice found to benefit students who have low prior knowledge as well as high prior knowledge

A new study by Buchin and Mulligan (2023) has found that retrieval practice is beneficial for both high prior knowledge students and low prior knowledge students.

Retrieval practice¹ (sometimes called the “Testing Effect”) refers to a learning technique in which students are prompted to retrieve information from memory.  It often takes the form of a brief, low-stakes quiz, or asking learners to write down everything they can recall about the last lesson. This simple technique has a powerful impact on learning. The act of trying to recall recently-learned information has the side-effect of strengthening cognitive connections, thereby improving retention.

One classic experiment that highlights the effectiveness of retrieval practice was conducted by Roediger and Karpicke in 2006. Participants were divided into two groups. Both groups spent 7 minutes studying a passage of text relating to a science topic (e.g., “The Sun”, “Sea Otters”). They were then given a 5 break. Following the break, Group 1 wrote down everything they could recall about the passage (this was the Retrieval Practice condition). Group 2 was given an additional 7 minutes to study the text passage (this was the restudying condition).  A week later, both groups were tested on the material. Group 1 had a significantly better recollection of the material, even though they studied the text passage for half as long as their Group 2 counterparts. 

This experiment demonstrated that prompting students to actively recall information significantly improves long-term retention compared to re-reading. This finding has been replicated in dozens of similar studies at all grade levels (Agarwal, Nunes & Blunt, 2021).  

The recent paper by Buchin and Mulligan (2023) further adds to this body of research. The researchers wanted to know whether retrieval practice benefits all students, or whether it disproportionately helps students with higher or lower levels of prior knowledge. Their experiment revealed that both groups benefited from retrieval practice. Moreover, the benefits were approximately equal; performance improvements in both cases were approximately 10%, or one letter grade higher.

The Buchin and Mulligan (2023) study offers further evidence that Retrieval Practice benefits a wide range of learners. It is a low-cost, easy-to-implement technique that teachers everywhere can use to boost the performance of their students.  

The cultofpedagogy.com website offers useful resources where teachers can learn more about Retrieval Practice.

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Undergraduate students often don’t use, or know about, effective study techniques

A recent study by Hartwig et al. (2022), involving 314 undergrad students, demonstrated that most students failed to recognize the benefits of incorporating spaced and interleaved practice in their studying.

Spacing (also known as distributed practice) is the technique of spreading your study sessions over time. Research shows that students learn more from five one-hour study sessions, each a day apart, than from a five-hour study session on a single day. This finding has been replicated in hundreds of experiments (Cepeda et al., 2006).

Interleaving² is the technique of mixing or alternating between different related topics when studying. For example, suppose a student has been taught how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions, and now wants to practice them. One way to study might be to practice 10 addition problems, then 10 subtraction problems, then 10 multiplication problems and finally 10 division problems. However, a better study strategy is to interleave (i.e., mix up) the forty problems (e.g., add, multiply, add, subtract, divide, multiply, etc.) Research has repeatedly demonstrated that interleaving facilitates better long-term retention (Brunmair & Richter, 2019).

Both spacing and interleaving contribute to effective learning by adding variability (spacing achieves this via time, and interleaving by mixing up different types of problems). Variable practice provides students with more opportunity to cognitively engage with the content. As such, the effort generated by spacing and interleaving ultimately results in long-term, more durable learning (Bjork & Bjork, 2020; Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015).

The research by Hartwig et al. (2022) asks: Are University students aware of the benefits of spacing and interleaving?

To answer this question, they asked students to build/select study schedules. In their two-part study, 193 undergraduate students were asked to design learning schedules for a hypothetical math class (Study 1). They then asked 175 undergraduates to select schedules from five hypothetical schedules in response to a variety of questions (Study 2). Students were also asked to provide reasons for their selections, and to rate the utility of spacing and interleaving. “In both studies, most participants incorrectly judged schedules with minimal degrees of spacing and interleaving to be most effective. Also, schedules with more spacing and interleaving were perceived to be more difficult, less enjoyable, and less common” (Hartwig et al., 2022).

The Hartwig et al. (2022) study concluded that undergraduate students do not fully recognize, or appreciate, the benefits of spacing and interleaving. Teaching them about these strategies may help them study more effectively. The investigators recommend explicitly teaching students when and how to use these techniques. They also suggest telling students that these techniques initially require a bit more effort, but the additional effort is beneficial in the long run.

References

Agarwal, P., Nunes, L. & Blunt, J. (2021). Retrieval practice consistently benefits student learning: A systematic review of applied research in schools and classrooms. Educational Psychology Review, 33, 1409-1453.

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2020). Desirable difficulties in theory and practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(4), 475–479.

Brunmair, M., & Richter, T. (2019). Similarity matters: A meta-analysis of interleaved learning and its moderators. Psychological Bulletin, 145(11), 1029–1052.

Buchin, Z. L., & Mulligan, N. W. (2023). Retrieval-based learning and prior knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 115(1), 22–35.

Cepeda N. J., Pashler H., Vul E., Wixted J. T., Rohrer D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 354–380.

Hartwig, M. K., Rohrer, D., & Dedrick, R. F. (2022). Scheduling math practice: Students’ underappreciation of spacing and interleaving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 28(1), 100–113. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000391

Roediger & Karpicke, (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological science, 17(3), 249-255.

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 176–199.

1. Click here for a microlesson on retrieval practice

2. Click here for a microlesson on interleaving