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ERIC Number: EJ1474683
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-May
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0888-4080
EISSN: EISSN-1099-0720
Available Date: 2025-05-22
Distributed Practice and Interleaved Practice: Undergraduate Students' Strategies, Experiences, and Beliefs
Applied Cognitive Psychology, v39 n3 e70071 2025
Do undergraduate students know and use "distributed practice," the strategy of spacing apart learning opportunities over time, and "interleaved practice," the strategy of alternating between topics during learning? What beliefs do students hold about how learning should be scheduled, and how are common learning activities--such as using flashcards and completing problem sets--actually scheduled? To explore these questions, we surveyed students at two major universities in North America and Southeast Asia, respectively. We found that distributed practice is unfamiliar to many students, whereas interleaved practice is virtually unknown. Both strategies are often underutilized and perceived with mixed effectiveness. Instructors, meanwhile, reportedly use various scheduling approaches in lectures and assignments. Additionally, distributed practice was associated with better academic performance. These findings, which showed relative consistency across culturally diverse samples, underscore significant gaps in student awareness and adoption of distributed and interleaved practice, highlighting the need to improve their integration into educational settings.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: North America; Asia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; 2Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain; 3Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA; 4Centre for Social Sciences, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada; 5School of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA