#distributed practice

It’s day one of semester 2, and day one of using Anki! Only one lecture made into Anki cards today, as my other lecture consisted of almost entirely ice breakers and nothing that requires revision. 

While I will admit, making the cards is a bit fiddly (especially since I have never used the program before) - and I still don’t know what intervals to use between repetitions - revising the cards is a lot of fun! I really enjoy practice testing as a revision technique, so hopefully this keeps me on track with testing and retesting as the semester goes along rather than bundling all my revision into a few weeks before exams. 

Massed Practice refers to cramming information all at once. It is not time-effective.

The spacing effect was first noted by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 1800s. You will develop better retention and recall, especially in the long run, if you use the same amount of study time spread out over many shorter sessions.

This doesn't mean you have to study every day. Memory researcher Harry Bahrick noted that the longer the time between study sessions, the better the long-term retention, and the fewer sessions you need!

This long study reviews many different types of learning methods, and concludes that "distributed practice" is the best.