Use ‘Distributed Practice’ to Better Retain What You Study

There’s obviously no point in studying if you don’t remember what you went over when it’s time for the test—and one of the best ways to retain that knowledge is to maintain a particularly strict study schedule. The technique is called “distributed practice,” and here’s how it works.

What is distributed practice?

Distributed practice, like a number of the most common study techniques you can try, has its roots in the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who studied memory. Over 100 years ago, he studied nonsense syllables over and over to figure out the best way to get them to stick in his memory. He found that the frequency with which he studied them, as well as the order in which he studied them, had an impact on how well he retained them.

Ultimately, his findings led to the development of what we now know as distributed practice, which, per Purdue University, is just a fancy name for spacing study sessions out in a specific way and studying the same thing every time. In essence, it’s the opposite of “massed practice,” which is more commonly known as cramming. Instead of studying everything in one block before your test, you study it in smaller bursts leading up to the test.

How do you distribute the practice?

The trick here is deciding how often to space out your study sessions. Purdue recommends setting aside 50 minutes each day for studying, but leaving one day per week free of studying altogether. Choosing what you study during each day’s allotted time, though, comes down to your testing schedule.

Look ahead in your syllabi and mark all test dates in your planner. According to one study, your best bet for maximum retention is to study the same topic every 10 per cent to 30 per cent of the time you’ll need to retain it. That means if you have a test in 10 days, you’ll study from every one to three days from now until then.

This is where retrieval practice comes in. During your first few study sessions, you’re just studying as normal, using a technique like SQ3R or KWL to engage in active reading. After that, though, you should be using active recall strategies to retrieve the information you already know during the study sessions. The best way to do this is using flashcards, especially following the Leitner system to review the content you already know on spaced intervals that depend on how well you’ve mastered it.

The most important part of distributed practice, though, is repeatedly going over the content on a fixed schedule—even if that means just rereading and reviewing it every four days, it will be more beneficial than cramming.