Violets are blue

When I pressed the Publish button on Roses are red, it capstoned a year of semantics for me which spilled over into this year.

In addition to my annual list of conferences in Australia for digital educators, I applied my cognitive surplus to another nine posts that dive deeper into the murky waters of meaning.

• In Double defence I pondered the defensive value of so-called “skills of the future”, while in Skills of the present I recognised their value for offense.
   
• In Great and small I reshaped our pedagogical terminology.
   
• In Higher Assessment I proposed a new role for universities.
   
• In Space invaders I untangled terms relating to the spacing effect, while in Time pilot I extended the coverage to interleaving.
   
• In Gold vibes only I borrowed a mantra coined by the great Patty Mills and applied it to organisational culture.
   
• In The apex of innovation I isolated a variable that’s critical to continuous improvement.
   
• In The $100 hypothetical I compared can’t with won’t.

I’m keen to hear your views among mine, so feel free to add a comment to each of the conversations.

If you already have, I salute you!

Time pilot

There was an aspect I omitted from my previous post, Space invaders, in which I covered the spacing effect as a means of maximising long-term retention.

Zsolt Olah picked it: interleaving and – ironically! – I judged it a bridge too far to include in the same post and so decided to split it out across a second one.

You’ll see why…

Interleaving

Before defining interleaving, I feel it’s helpful to review the opposite: blocked presentation or blocking. This approach is equivalent to massed presentation whereby the content is consumed successively:

An alternative approach is to split each block into leaves and vary their presentation. This approach is known as interleaved presentation or varied presentation or mixed presentation:

The illustration above maintains the topical sequence, in contrast to random interleaved presentation whereby the sequence is shuffled:

Spaced interleaving

Just as the spacing effect can be employed to produce spaced block presentation:

…so too can it be employed to produce spaced interleaved presentation (grouped):

…or spaced random interleaved presentation (grouped):

I use the qualifier “grouped” because, while that’s the traditional way of illustrating interleaving – I suspect due to the formal paradigm of education by which you fill up the periods assigned to you – I see no reason why each leaf couldn’t be separated over time; hence spaced interleaved presentation (separated):

…and spaced random interleaved presentation (separated):

As you can see, it gets complicated real quick, and that’s before employing reinforcement or the testing effect!

Dynamic interleaving

When I look at the various permutations of spacing and interleaving, I wonder if an optimal timing or sequencing regime exists. Full disclosure: I’ve done zero research to find out; if you have, I’d love to play my lazy web card and ask you to share your findings via a comment below.

I also wonder about the efficacy of a bespoke regime that sequences the leaves according to a dynamic pattern – test latest > test previous > present new – leading to a final summative test:

I call this regime spaced dynamic interleaved retrieval (quite a mouthful!) or dynamic interleaving for short. Again, if you’re aware of anything out there that’s similar, please let me know.

Space invaders

Sometimes, out of the blue, one of my blog posts really hits the mark.

Such was the case recently with Great and small in which I had a go at redefining our pedagogical terminology.

While the post only attracted a few comments – cheers Neil, Dani and Rob – my friend Helen Blunden observes that barely anyone does that any more. To her point, I was contacted via other means by readers who wanted to thank me for sharing my semantics with them.

That was very rewarding, and it has encouraged me to do it again!

Lately I’ve been thinking about the spacing effect.

And when I say “thinking about”, I mean getting thoroughly confused. Over the years I’m sure we’ve all encountered phrases such as distributed learning, spaced repetition, retrieval practice and variations thereof; but it has become apparent to me that many of us conflate these terms.

So I’ve spent a typically disproportionate amount of time trying to untangle the meanings of these phrases, and it is these semantics I wish to share with you now.

The spacing effect

I consider the spacing effect an umbrella term describing the improved outcomes achieved by separating learning activity over time.

The foremost example is spaced presentation or distributed learning whereby the content to be learned is chunked and consumed periodically:

This approach contrasts with massed presentation whereby the content is consumed all in one hit, as per a crammer the night before an exam:

Science says while the crammer might do well on exam day, they’d retain more in the longer term if they were to split their study across the semester. And this makes sense to me, as the cognitive load is reduced in each session, and I presume the time intervals accommodate further cognitive processing that embeds the concepts deeper in memory.

Reinforcement

Note that my example of the spacing effect above didn’t involve the repetition of content; but it may well have.

Spaced presentation of the same chunks is known as spaced practice or spaced rehearsal or spaced repetition or distributed practice:

This approach contrasts with massed practice or massed rehearsal whereby the content is repeated in one hit, again as per a crammer the night before an exam:

When the duration of the time intervals between repetitions increases, it is known as expanding practice or expanding rehearsal:

The testing effect

If the repeated content is presented in the form of active recall, the approach is known as spaced retrieval practice or simply spaced retrieval and it’s covered by the sub-umbrella term the testing effect:

This approach contrasts with massed retrieval practice whereby the content is repeatedly recalled in one hit, as per rote learning:

When the duration of the time intervals between active recalls increases, it is known as expanding retrieval practice:

While the recall device might be a quiz, it might also be a case, debate, game, simulation, on-the-job assignment… whatever demands the retrieval of the concepts from memory.

It’s worth noting the rather unhelpfully labelled spaced learning is a specific approach to spaced retrieval whereby the first presentation is followed by a 10-minute interval during which the learner undertakes a distractor activity (e.g. shooting hoops), then an active recall session such as a quiz, then another 10-minute distractor activity, then the final session in which the learner applies the knowledge in the form of a task.

In today’s hybrid and hyperbusy working environment, I feel the timing has never been better to leverage the spacing effect in our instructional design.

Instead of a 3-hour long class or a 45-minute long e-learning course, why not chunk the content and deliver it over time?

This approach enables our target audience to weave it into their work day… and make it stick.