Distributed Practice: Rarely Realized in Self-Regulated Mathematical Learning

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect and use of distributed practice in the context of self-regulated mathematical learning in high school. With distributed practice, a fixed learning duration is spread over several sessions, whereas with massed practice, the same time is spent learning in one session. Distributed practice has been proven to be an effective tool for improving long-term retention of verbal material and simple procedural knowledge in mathematics, at least when the practice schedule is externally guided. In the present study, distributed practice was investigated in a context that required a higher degree of self-regulation. In total, 158 secondary school students were invited to participate. After motivational and cognitive characteristics of the students were assessed, the students were introduced to basic statistics, a topic of their regular curriculum. At the end of the introduction, the students could sign up for the study to further practice this content. Eighty-seven students did so and were randomly assigned either to the distributed or to the massed practice condition. In the distributed practice condition, they received three practice sets on three different days. In the massed practice condition, they received the same three sets, but all on one day. All exercises were worked in the context of self-regulated learning at home. Performance was tested 2 weeks after the last practice set. Only 44 students finished the study, which hampered the analysis of the effect of distributed practice. The characteristics of the students who completed the exercises were analyzed exploratory: The proportion of students who finished all exercises was significantly higher in the massed than in the distributed practice condition. Within the distributed practice condition, a significantly larger proportion of female students completed the exercises compared to male students. Additionally, among these female students, a larger proportion showed lower concentration difficulty. No such differential effects were revealed in the massed practice condition. Our results suggest that the use of distributed practice in the context of self-regulated learning might depend on learner characteristics. Accordingly, distributed practice might obtain more reliable effects in more externally guided learning contexts.

Implementing distributed practice in statistics courses: Benefits for retention and transfer.

“…No such drop was revealed in the crammed practice condition. This pattern underlines the assumption that distributed practice is an obstacle for learners and is therefore hardly used in the context of self-regulated learning (Barzagar Nazari & Ebersbach, 2018;McCabe, 2011;Tauber, Dunlosky, Rawson, Wahlheim, & Jacoby, 2013;Wissman, Rawson, & Pyc, 2012;cf. Michael, 1991, who proposes a "procrastination scallop" indicating a lower exam and course success the later students start to complete the required tasks because less time is left).…”

“…Thus, when students were not directly or indirectly forced to practice the knowledge previously acquired in a lecture, they hardly did so—and they did it even less frequently and less continuously when they had to practice in a distributed manner compared to a crammed manner. This finding puts into question whether an unsupervised implementation of distributed practice into students’ self-regulated learning could be successful (see also Barzagar Nazari & Ebersbach, 2018). Experiment 2 was conducted to follow up on Experiment 1 and investigated the effect of distributed practice on the retention and transfer of knowledge, but completing the practice tasks was mandatory to avoid massive drop-out.…”

Implementing Distributed Practice in Statistics Courses: Benefits for Retention and Transfer

“…No such drop was revealed in the crammed practice condition. This pattern underlines the assumption that distributed practice is an obstacle for learners and is therefore hardly used in the context of self-regulated learning (Barzagar Nazari, & Ebersbach, 2018;McCabe, 2011;Tauber, Dunlosky, Rawson, Wahlheim & Jacoby, 2012;Wissman, Rawson, & Pyc, 2012;cf. Michael, 1991, who proposes a "procrastination scallop" indicating a lower exam and course success the later students start to complete the required tasks because less time is left).…”

“…Thus, when students were not directly or indirectly forced to practice the knowledge previously acquired in a lecture, they hardly did so-and they did it even less frequently and less continuously when they had to practice in a distributed manner compared to a crammed manner. This finding puts into question whether an unsupervised implementation of DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE FOSTERS KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER 15 distributed practice into students' self-regulated learning could be successful (see also Barzagar Nazari, & Ebersbach, 2018). Experiment 2 was conducted to follow up on Experiment 1 and investigated the effect of distributed practice on the retention and transfer of knowledge, but completing the practice tasks was mandatory to avoid massive drop-out.…”

An MRI Study on Effects of Math Education on Brain Development Using Multi-Instance Contrastive Learning

“…The understanding of these associations could help in utilizing mathematical learning to benefit the individual's development (Baglama et al, 2017 ; Steffe, 2017 ; Zacharopoulos et al, 2021 ). Toward a better understanding of education behaviors, many researchers made a great number of efforts and yielded a wide range of education discoveries and educational tools from psychological measurements to artificial intelligence (AI) techniques (Steffe, 2017 ; Barzagar Nazari and Ebersbach, 2018 ; Mammarella et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020a , 2021a ; Peng et al, 2021a , b ).…”