Distributed practice is when a student practices a skill or knowledge during many sessions that are short in length and distributed over time. For example, if you’re teaching a language course, you might practice every day for one week on a list of vocabulary words. That would be distributed practice. But even more effective would be repeating that practice once a week for the next few weeks.
Students who use distributed practice learn more material, and remember the material longer, than students who cram because:
It’s easier for students to maintain motivation and focus for short spans of time rather than for an all-night study session.
Short practice sessions prevent mental and physical tiredness. Fatigue interferes with memory and reasoning, and reduces the ability to focus.
Research indicates that we continue to learn and process information that we study, after the study period has ended. If our brains were...