Interleaved Practice

Interleaved practice is simply a set of problems mixed in a certain way.

Material is interleaved when consecutive problems cannot be solved by using the same strategy. As an example, if one problem is solved by knowing how to find the area of a circle, the next problem would require some other mathematical knowledge (say, solving an inequality). 

Many assignments group similar questions together and allow students to use the same strategy over and over again to solve the problems. This has a drawback that students do not really need to think to identify the strategy that will help them be successful with the question - they simply use the same strategy as the previous questions. Interleaving questions has the benefit of making students identify the correct strategy they will need to use in order to solve the question. The act of having to analyze to determine the correct strategy makes the learning more durable. 

Interleaved practice gives students a chance to choose a strategy.

As noted above, when problems are interleaved, the student is forced to choose a strategy to use instead of having that already decided for them. This gives students a chance to both choose and use a strategy.

Interleaved practice doesn’t require students to solve extra problems.

Interleaved practice does not require new questions to be developed - instead questions just need to be thoughtfully arranged. To do this, a few problems can be removed from each blocked assignment, and these problems can be combined to create interleaved assignments. 

The diagram below shows that when students work on problems that have been interleaved, they are better able to retain the knowledge they initially gained and practiced vs. students who gained the knowledge and practiced it in a blocked (same strategy over and over in succession) method. 

Back to the Retention Strategies page.