The utility of distributed practice in curriculum design and effective learning strategies

Perspective Article

Published on: January 31, 2022

6 min read

Lewis A Baker, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Science, University of Surrey, UK Distributed practice, a learning strategy that can inform curriculum design, deliberately spaces out opportunities for memory storage and retrieval of taught information to develop deep, robust and long-term learning for students (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Massed practice (better known to students as ‘cramming’), in contrast, involves material being studied for similar periods but without (or with little) spacing between such memory-storage-retrieval opportunities. In such cases, knowledge and skill competency are often forgotten. This translates clearly into assessment, where those who have learned in a ‘distributed curriculum’ compared to a ‘massed curriculum’ can show significant learning gains (Hattie, 2008) from the longer-lasting and deeper learning offered by spacing learning opportunities out, leading to what is referred to as the ‘distributed practice’, ‘spacing’ or ‘lag

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