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Interleaving#

See also: effective-learning-strategies

Like spaced-practice, interleaving is a scheduling technique shown to increase learning. The distinction between interleaving and spaced-practice can be blurry.

Traditional scheduling as students attempting many versions of the same problem in a given session (aka blocking).

Interleaving schedules sequences of different ideas or problems types in a given session.

Multiple ways to apply interleaving#

Problem type - mathematics#

e.g. have students calculate volume of different shapes, or solving graph or slope problems.

By doing this students gain experience at both

  1. Applying the method, and
  2. Selecting the right method to apply.

Discrimination, inductive learning#

e.g. art - matching painters to their respective painters.

Allowing comparison between exemplars of different categories.

Study and test opportunities#

Rather than work on a sequence of problems, work on problem and then view a worked example.

Advice for students#

  • Don't interleave different subjects
  • Switch between ideas during a study session. Don't study one idea for too long.
  • Go back over the ideas again in different orders to strengthen your understanding.
  • Make links between different ideas as you switch between them.
  • Don't switch too often, or spend too little time on one idea
  • Interleaving wil feel harder than studying the same thing for a long time - but it is helpful

References#

Rohrer, D. (2012). Interleaving Helps Students Distinguish among Similar Concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 355--367. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-012-9201-3

Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. F., & Burgess, K. (2014). The benefit of interleaved mathematics practice is not limited to superficially similar kinds of problems. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(5), 1323--1330. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0588-3 teaching-mathematics

Weinstein, Y., Madan, C. R., & Sumeracki, M. A. (2018). Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-017-0087-y