{"id":6698,"date":"2022-08-27T10:00:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=6698"},"modified":"2022-08-27T08:39:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T13:39:37","slug":"how-students-think-they-learn-the-plusses-and-minuses-of-interleaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/how-students-think-they-learn-the-plusses-and-minuses-of-interleaving\/","title":{"rendered":"How Students (Think They) Learn: The Plusses and Minuses of “Interleaving”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the school year begins, teachers want to know: can mind\/brain research give us strategies to foster learning<\/em>?<\/p>\n

We might also wonder: what will our students think of those strategies<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\"College<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems plausible — even likely — that students will prefer<\/strong> the strategies that help them learn. If those strategies help, why wouldn’t students like them?<\/p>\n

Strategies to Foster Learning<\/h2>\n

Some classroom truths seem almost to basic to say out loud. For instance:<\/p>\n

#1: We want our students to learn\u00a0several different sub-topics within any particular topic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And<\/p>\n

#2:\u00a0Students need to practice to learn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When teachers think about those basic truths at the same time, we often adopt a specific strategy.<\/p>\n

We ask students to practice (that’s #2) each individual subtopic (that’s#1) on its own. So:<\/p>\n

Students practice identifying nouns, and then they practice identifying verbs, and then the practice identifying adjectives.<\/p>\n

Or, angles, then circumferences, then areas.<\/p>\n

Or, backhand, then forehand, then serve.<\/p>\n

We could represent this strategy this way: AAA, BBB, CCC. Each sub-topic gets its own discrete practice session.<\/p>\n

But, would a different strategy be better? How about: ABC, CBA, BCA?<\/p>\n

In other words: should students\u00a0jumble different topics together when they practice?<\/em><\/p>\n

Interleaving: Old Research, and New<\/h2>\n

The answer to that question is YES: students SHOULD jumble different sub-topics together when they practice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For research confirmation, you can check out this study<\/a> by Rohrer and Pashler.<\/p>\n

Or, for a broader synthesis, explore Agarwal and Bain’s great book, Powerful Teaching<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or, you might ask a pointed question: “has this strategy been tested in\u00a0actual classrooms<\/em>, not just in psychology research labs?”<\/p>\n

The answer to that question is also YES.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recently published study<\/a>\u00a0by Samani and Pan tried this strategy in a college physics class.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, students learned more<\/em> when their homework problems were interleaved than when sub-topics were practiced one at a time.<\/p>\n

That is: students whose practice problems covered Coulomb’s Law by itself learned less than those whose practice problems also included capacitors and composite wires.<\/p>\n

So, we arrive at this tentative teaching advice:<\/p>\n

No doubt, you have your students practice — either in class, or with homework, or both.<\/p>\n

When students practice, they should work on a few sub-topics at a time<\/em>, not just one.<\/p>\n

So far, so good.<\/p>\n

Paradox: Teaching Solutions Create Studying Problems<\/h2>\n

Let’s return to the question that opened this blog post: do students prefer the study strategy that fosters learning<\/em>. (They should; after all, it helped them learn!)<\/p>\n

Reader, they do not<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

In Samani and Pan’s study (and many others), students found that\u00a0effective learning strategies are more difficult<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: they require more thought<\/em>, and frequently lead to more short-term mistakes<\/em>. (Students did relatively badly on the homework before they did relatively well on the tests.)<\/p>\n

From one perspective, this finding makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

If we\u00a0do difficult mental work<\/em>, we will struggle and fail more often<\/em>. And yet, all that extra hard thinking will ultimately lead to\u00a0more learning. <\/em>(Soderstrom and Bjork have written a GREAT review article<\/a> on this topic.)<\/p>\n

That encouraging perspective, however, runs into a perfectly understandable alternative: most\u00a0people don’t like struggle and failure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We shouldn’t blame students for disliking the interleaving. It hurt their heads. They did badly on the homework. YUCK.<\/p>\n

As teachers, we have the long-term perspective. We know that short-term struggle leads ultimately to greater learning.<\/p>\n

But, most students lack that perspective. They feel the struggle and the pain, but don’t recognize the long-term benefits.<\/p>\n

Teaching Advice 2.0<\/h2>\n

Given all these findings, how should we structure students’ practice?<\/p>\n

I think all these findings add up to this guidance:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: interleave practice.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: tell students that you are doing so, and explain why.<\/p>\n

The language you use and the level of explanation will, of course, vary by the age of the student. But, let them know.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: structure grading systems to value ultimate learning more than immediate understanding.<\/p>\n

After all, if we\u00a0both<\/em> require interleaved practice (which is quite difficult)\u00a0and<\/em> grade students on the success of their practice, we will — in effect — force them to have lower grades.\u00a0They will rightly feel the injustice of this instructional paradigm.<\/p>\n

In other words: this practice strategy — in my view — does imply a grading policy as well.<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/h2>\n

Students, of course, must practice<\/strong> to learn.<\/p>\n

Teachers should structure<\/strong> their practice to cover a few sub-topics simultaneously.<\/p>\n

We should explain<\/strong> why we’re doing so; “interleaving” ultimately results in more learning.<\/p>\n

We should create grading structures<\/strong> that account for the initial difficulty of interleaved practice.<\/p>\n

If we get this balance right, students will willingly face early learning challenges, and ultimately learn more.<\/p>\n

\n

Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2010). Recent research on human learning challenges conventional instructional strategies.\u00a0Educational Researcher<\/i>,\u00a039<\/i>(5), 406-412.<\/p>\n

Agarwal, P. K., & Bain, P. M. (2019).\u00a0Powerful teaching: Unleash the science of learning<\/i>. John Wiley & Sons.<\/p>\n

Samani, J., & Pan, S. C. (2021). Interleaved practice enhances memory and problem-solving ability in undergraduate physics.\u00a0NPJ science of learning<\/i>,\u00a06<\/i>(1), 1-11.<\/p>\n

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning versus performance: An integrative review.\u00a0Perspectives on Psychological Science<\/i>,\u00a010<\/i>(2), 176-199.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the school year begins, teachers want to know: can mind\/brain research give us strategies to foster learning? We might also wonder: what will our students think of those strategies? It seems plausible — even likely — that students will prefer the strategies that help them learn. If those strategies help, why wouldn’t students like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,77],"class_list":["post-6698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-interleaving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6698"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6708,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698\/revisions\/6708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}