Do students think that difficult or valuable materials should be restudied sooner rather than later?

Abstract

Despite the clear long-term benefits of spaced practice, students and teachers often choose massed practice. Whether learners actually fail to appreciate the benefits of spacing is, however, open to question. Early studies (e.g., Zechmeister & Shaughnessy, 1980) found that participants' judgments of learning were higher after massed than after spaced repetitions, but more recent studies have found that participants, when allowed to choose between restudying right away and restudying later, tend to choose later, apparently reflecting an appreciation for the benefits of spacing. In these recent studies, however, choosing to restudy later also meant restudying closer to the final test, leaving open the question of what was driving participants' choices. In addition, the choice confronting participants has typically been between getting a spaced and truly massed repetition, whereas in real-world learning contexts the choice is often between a short, but not immediate, spacing interval and a longer one. In our research, we controlled final retention interval and asked participants to choose between restudying word pairs after either a relatively short (but not truly massed) interval or a longer interval. We found that participants had a clear preference for restudying higher priority (more difficult or more valuable) items sooner rather than later, even when doing so was not the most effective option. Thus, previous findings showing a preference for spaced repetition do not extend to a context in which the shorter spacing interval is substantially longer than true massing, and they may merely reflect a preference to restudy closer to the test.

Regional Approach to Musculoskeletal System Instruction May Enhance Student Performance

“…It is hypothesized that prior experience with anatomy presented in a regional approach will not only improve performance in the sophomore level course but also ease the transition to professional school. In addition, the presentation using a regional approach is consistent with the concept of "spaced repetition, " in which subject matter is repeated and tested over a period of time (Cohen et al 2013, Karpicke and Bauernschmidt 2011, Logan et al 2011. The results of this study suggest that using the regional approach, which required students to think of bone features as muscle attachments weekly and incorporate those attachments into joint movements simultaneously, better incorporates spaced repetition and leads to increased learning when students are tested on similar concepts in the future.…”

Self-regulated spacing in a massive open online course is related to better learning

“…Despite abundant evidence in the cognitive psychology literature in favor of spaced learning, students do not always appreciate the benefits of spacing 27 . For example, in the lab, by simply changing the conditions of a task, researchers can make students appear to make the right decision to space their study [28][29][30][31] or to make the wrong decision to mass their study 32,33 . When asked directly about what they do or would do in their own learning, surveys show that people report that they tend not to return to previously studied materials [34][35][36][37][38] .…”

Do students use testing and feedback while learning? A focus on key concept definitions and learning to criterion

“…For instance, students often choose to space their practice rather than mass it (e.g., Pyc & Dunlosky, 2010;Son, 2004;Toppino & Cohen, 2010). Unfortunately, when given a choice to use a long versus short lag for spacing, they choose the short lag (Cohen, Yan, Halamish, & Bjork, 2013;Wissman, Rawson, & Pyc, 2012), which is less optimal for learning than the long lag. This and other evidence suggests that students often do not regulate their learning effectively, which may also be the case with testing (for a review, see Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013).…”