Spacing Effect
Is Spacing Out Your Students Work Effective to Their Learning?
Close your eyes and think back to when you were a little kid. When you were working on your homework at home and having a very tough time figuring something out, try and remember what your parents said to you. They probably said something like this; “Take a break”, “Move on to something else and then come back to it”, or “Eat some dinner and pick up your pencil again after you finish eating.”
Or think back to that time in high school when you realized you had a big exam in Chemistry the next day. You probably stayed up all night studying to ‘cram’ information into your brain. I bet you aced that exam; but a few days later, the next day, or even later that same day, you probably did not remember much, if any information at all. This is because your working memory was overloaded and could only handle and process so much information at once. If you study for five hours over an extended period of time, it is proven that you will have better retention of the information in the long run than if you crammed for five hours all at once.
Instead of cramming, you should space out your study time. This is referred to as the distributed learning technique. If you are teaching your students addition for the first time, this technique says that you should teach them a little now, a little tomorrow, and a little more next week. This will greatly increase students ability to retain the material being covered. As mentioned in ‘How We Learn’ by Benedict Carey, “Distributed learning in certain situations, can double the amount we remember later on” (Carey, 2014, p. 66).
What is Distributed Learning Good For?
Distributed Learning is best for things like memorization, not complex concepts. This means that if you are going to use this method of studying, it is best to study things such as the capitals of states, a list of word definitions, or even a list of phone numbers.
Who Discovered This Concept?
Piotr Woźniak was a researcher in the theory of spaced repetition. Piotr Woźniak created a flashcard-like computer-based learning system called SuperMemo in 1985. SuperMemo is an online software that computes when we should study material again based on when the exam/test or retrieval practice is supposed to be taking place.
If you what more information on this concept check out these links:
Interesting! I had never heard of Distributed Learning before. Thank you for teaching me about it. One of the many debates in education is how much emphasis do we put on memorization? I personally choose to spend the majority of my instructional time getting my students to think deeper rather than memorizing since they can access information at any time and from any place with a device. What is your philosophy on this?
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