Mix up the Way Your Learners Practice (Theory)

Learning research demonstrates that how we learn is often counterintuitive. A few examples.

• Learning that’s difficult tends to stick better.
• Rather than buckle down for a four-hour study session before an exam, you’ll retain more if you break up the cram session into four smaller ones.
• Instead of focusing on one type of skill for an extended period (say, taking 10 wrist shots in hockey) and then moving on to a related skill (10 backhands), we learn quicker if we mix up our practice (one wrist shot, followed by backhand, followed by a slapshot).

As of late, I’ve been intrigued by this last technique, which the research calls “interleaving” practice, because it stands against logic and the way I’ve practiced for most of my life. Shouldn’t you come to understand the nuance of one skill and then, once you sort of have it, move on to the next?

“No,” says the research.*

Why does the mixing up the way we practice cause us to learn better? At a high level, interleaving challenges the brain – “woah, now how do I do this again?” – and stuff that requires effort to learn tends to stick better. Researchers also assert that mixing up the way we practice helps us understand the underlying concepts of each task, as well as how tasks differ, and that understanding sharpens our skill at the individual task at hand. Finally, interleaving reflects real life. As a hockey forward, you'll never take four slapshots in a row. You'll take a wrist shot on one shift, and then, if you're lucky and playing well, a backhand on the next. As an eighth-grade math student, your test will not have a series of four questions on the same concept, followed by another series on another concept. No, the types of problems will be mixed up. Life is a test that comes at us helter-skelter.

Ok, so now, you have some of the theory as to why interleaving works. In this post, I give some practical advice on how you can mix up the way your learners practice.

? *R. Kerr and B. Booth, “Specific and Varied Practice of Motor Skill,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 46, No. 2, April 1978, 395-401. A seminal experiment that suggested that mixing up motor practice sharpened individual skills.

? *N.J. Cepeda, H. Pashler, E. Vul, J.T. Wixted, D. Rohrer, “Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis,” Psychological Bulletin 132, 2006, 354-380. A review of the literature concerning spacing and interleaving practice.