Why Cramming Won't get You That A: The Interleaving Effect

It is that time of year again; every college student comes out of hiding and pitches a tent in their campus library. In recent years, finals week has become less about how much a student has learned and more about how much information can be jammed into their minds in a 48-hour period. We have all been told at some point that cramming is not the way to go--but we still insist on doing it. But is it really worth the all-nighters, stress breakouts, and coffee binges? There is a better way to study--a way to actually better learn the information--and it is called interleaving.

Interleaving is mixing practice of several related skills together as opposed to attempting to master one skill at a time, which is referred to as "blocking" (Steven Pan, 2015). Scientific American released an article in August of 2015 about this concept, explaining that this mixing of concepts actually increases the retention of information. For example, a volleyball player practicing serving, setting, and spiking the ball may believe that working on each skill individually before moving to the next will get the the best results. But this article says that an improvement in performance is more likely to occur if the player does rotations of all of the skills simultaneously.

Interleaving has been implemented in sports practices for some time now, but only recently has it been studied in terms of academics. A three month study was done on 7th grade students in math class. Some used interleaving while others used the block learning method--students who used interleaving scored 25% better than those who didn't after just one day. After one month, scores grew to 76% (Pan 2015). There is one caveat--the concepts being learned must either be somewhat familiar or easy to grasp. It was found that in some areas, such as foreign language, interleaving can be more confusing than helpful when the learner is completely unfamiliar with the language at hand.

Dr. Barbra Knowlton, a researcher speaker at Loyola University Chicago, uses fMRI to show the significance of this very concept. These scans showed a major increase in activity in multiple regions of the brain (medial frontal, inferior parietal, and sensorimotor regions) in those who used interleaving techniques as opposed to blocked learning. She mentions mixing past knowledge with current learning topics is more effective than re-reading and highlighting the passage. By interleaving, one is forcing the brain to continuously retrieve the information over time instead of storing the concept in short-term memory during the blocked period of learning. This allows for a much deeper understanding of the material and increased retention.

This knowledge is vital not just for college students, but for everyone. We are constantly learning about the world around us and it is helpful to know the most effective way of doing so. So stop staring at that textbook and start mixing it up--it will make your life easier and actually improve your grades!


Works Cited

Lin, Chien-Ho (Janice), Barbara J. Knowlton, Ming-Chang Chiang, Marco Iacoboni, Parima Udompholkul, and Allan D. Wu. "Brain–behavior Correlates of Optimizing Learning through Interleaved Practice." NeuroImage 56.3 (2011): 1758-772. Web. 

Pan, Stevan. "The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning." Scientific American. N.p., 14 Aug. 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.

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