Teaching.IU

Context

This activity draws on students' intuitions about athletic training to develop an effective study schedule for an upcoming exam or other assessment. Spaced practice (aka distributed practice) is considered one of the most effective study strategies yet discovered by cognitive scientists (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Spaced practice involves breaking up study efforts into short, intense sessions spaced over several days. The strategy is successful because it takes advantage of powerful mechanisms learning that occur during sleep, such as memory consolidation. Learning that is lasting and less susceptible to forgetting involves generating new or strengthening existing synapses, which are the connections between neurons. Athletic improvement and learning both involve biological processes that take time and are stimulated through effort. In the context of athletic preparation, students realize that training should be intense but not too long, that there should be rest in-between sessions, and that it takes many days of training to see lasting improvements. All these requirements also apply to studying. One of the biggest obstacle towards implementing spaced practice is overcoming procrastination. This activity aims to increase student success by having them commit to a self-generated schedule of sessions study that applies a spaced practice strategy. 

Step-by-Step Implementation

Students develop and commit to a schedule of study sessions that implements spaced practice. This activity is best completed early in the term so that students may begin to use the strategy immediately.  

1. Show students a picture of an athletic competition. Preferably the competition is a sport with broad interest and requires considerable physical training to be competitive.   
2. Ask students to imagine that they are going to begin training for a similar competition in two weeks' time. They are asked to use the provided calendar to generate a training schedule, specifying what days they will train, how long the training sessions will be, and what will be accomplished during sessions. Students can work in groups, pairs, or individually to complete their calendars.  
3. Ask 2 or 3 students (or groups) to share their training schedules with the class and provide reasoning for their decisions.  
4. Provide a 10-minute lecture on spaced practice and why it works. Alternatively, students can be shown the short video below (1 min: 41 sec) on spaced practice. In my course, I required students to read the Scientific American article: “What Works, and What Doesn’t” provided below before the first exam, which will include five questions on the strategies discussed in the article. See the materials below for more information on spaced practice.  
5. Ask students to reflect on whether the schedules they developed for the imaginary athletic competition implement spaced practice. They are then asked to consider an upcoming exam date in one of their courses. Students then create a calendar of study sessions using their knowledge of spaced practice strategy to prepare for the exam.   
6. Once students have completed their schedules, provide them time to enter their schedule into their smartphone, laptop, or handout. A final step involves having students commit to their own generated schedules to prepare for the assessment.   
7. Several weeks before the first exam, remind students about the most effective evidence-based study strategies. This can include the retrieval practice and spaced practice that we discussed in the first week of the course. After I have posted grades, I will ask students to reflect on how well they stuck to the strategies they committed to and on how they might approach a future exam differently if they did not accomplish their goal.

Effectiveness

Students are often surprised that a schedule for athletic training aligns well with an effective schedule for studying. Some have expressed appreciation that they were given information and time to plan how to be successful in their classes. Since I began teaching study strategies to my students, I have had many instances of students who have significantly improved their grades and have suggested that their success was in part due to following the evidence-based strategies they learned in my course.