Interleave and Retrieve with Gimkit

Published by Mike Neumire on 5/24/2024

Create a potpourri of questions and return to them periodically!

Gimkit is the perfect platform for you to start practicing interleaving and spaced retrieval!

What is interleaving?

Interleaving is an instructional strategy that involves mixing different topics, skills, or types of problems within a single study or practice session rather than focusing on just one topic at a time. This method contrasts with blocked practice, where a learner concentrates on one type of material or skill until it is mastered before moving on to another. 

What is spaced retrieval?

Spaced Retrieval is a strategy that involves reviewing information at increasing intervals over time, rather than cramming it all into a single session. This method encodes learning into long-term memory more effectively than when students only get one opportunity to engage with it. 

How does Gimkit make this easy?

The typical workflow in Gimkit is to make a "kit" or set of questions based on a topic. You might use this kit to introduce a topic and determine how much background knowledge students already have, or you may use it as a means of review at the end of a lesson or unit. These kits then sit and wait for the next time that they are relevant - either the next year with a new group of students or at the end of the year when cramming for test prep. Simply returning to these kits at regular intervals will take advantage of spaced retrieval and improve results. But you can leverage a simple feature in Gimkit to easily tap into the power of interleaving as well. When creating a kit, many teachers will choose the option to "add from question bank" which allows them to search for, explore, and curate questions from the large public pool of questions created by other teachers. However when adding from the question bank, you can also look exclusively at your own kits. This means that you could create one review kit that pulls a couple questions from all your other kits. If you regularly use this review kit and it contains questions from a variety of topics you've taught, you are now taking advantage of interleaving and spaced retrieval without much extra effort. Check it out in the video below!