{"id":2766,"date":"2018-01-08T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=2766"},"modified":"2017-12-28T21:39:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T21:39:48","slug":"improving-the-syllabus-jumbling-practice-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/improving-the-syllabus-jumbling-practice-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving the Syllabus: Surprising Benefits of Jumbling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AdobeStock_119098880_Credit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recent entries on this blog have focused on the kind of practice<\/em> that helps students learn best.<\/p>\n

(Hint: it rhymes with “retrieval schmactrice.”)<\/p>\n

What can researchers tell us about the schedule<\/em> of that practice?<\/p>\n

Imagine that my students are studying three different grammar topics: direct and indirect objects, predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives, and prepositional phrases. How should I organize the practice problems on the syllabus?<\/p>\n

Jumbling practice problems?<\/h2>\n

I might put those practice problems in chunks: all the in\/direct object questions, then all the PN and PA problems, and then the prep phrase problems. (Psychologists call this schedule “blocking,” because students are practicing in blocks.)<\/p>\n

Or, I might jumble all the practice problems together: a prep phrase question followed by an indirect object question followed by a predicate adjective problem. (The technical term here is “interleaving.”)<\/p>\n

Which schedule works better?<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0does that schedule help both factual learning (grammar) and motor learning (tennis)?<\/p>\n

This brief video, starring Bob Bjork, has the answers:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=18&v=l-1K61BalIA<\/p>\n

As a bonus, here’s<\/a> a study where a college professor tried to interleave material in her classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jumbling practice problem topics together helps students learn more than organizing practice problems by topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,23],"class_list":["post-2766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-long-term-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2766"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2874,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions\/2874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}