Curriculum·G702 Pedagogical Fundamentals·about 31 min
Retrieval and spacing, against the feeling of learning
By the end of this lesson you can
- →State which study techniques the 2013 review rated low utility and which high, and why the ones students use most are the ones that work least
- →Explain retrieval practice and spacing as mechanisms, and say what each does that rereading cannot
- →Compute what a spaced schedule looks like against a massed one for the same number of exposures, and where the Academy's card intervals come from
- →Teach a cohort to use the cards as the course rather than as revision, and say why cutting them removes the mechanism
Graduate · enrolled learners
This lesson opens with Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, 2013.
- What happened
- John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawson, Elizabeth Marsh, Mitchell Nathan and Daniel Willingham reviewed ten learning techniques for Psychological Science in the Public Interest in January 2013, chosen because they were easy enough for any student to adopt, and rated each on the evidence for whether it improved learning across materials, learners and conditions. Rereading and highlighting, the two techniques students report relying on most, were rated low utility: they do not consistently improve performance, and highlighting can hurt on tasks that require inference. Practice testing and distributed practice were rated high utility, with benefits that held across ages, materials and retention intervals. The recommendation was direct: use practice testing instead of rereading.
- The decision point
- Students had chosen their techniques by how the studying felt, and the techniques that feel most like learning, reading the text again and marking the important parts, were the ones with the least effect. The two that work, testing yourself and spreading the work out, feel worse while you do them: retrieval is effortful and spacing means you have forgotten some of it by the time you return. A teacher who lets a cohort study by feel is letting them pick the low-utility techniques, and a course that supplies no retrieval and no spacing has left the mechanism that survives to the decision out of the design. The cards at the foot of every lesson here, scheduled across months, are that mechanism.
What you will be able to answer
- →Which techniques did the 2013 review rate low, and which high?
- →What does retrieval do that rereading does not?
- →Why do effective techniques feel worse?
- →What are the cards, in this Academy's design?
Orientation and Year One are open: anyone can read them without an account. From Year Two onward the lessons are for enrolled learners, because progress through the later years only means anything if it is tracked against a record.
It is free. We do not sell the list and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Sources and review
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1529100612453266
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26173288/
- https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2013-dunlosky.pdf
Confidence high·Volatility low·Reviewed 2026-09-14·Owner unassigned
Contested
The review rated techniques on breadth of evidence rather than effect size alone, and several techniques it rated moderate, such as interleaving and self-explanation, have stronger evidence now than in 2013. The lesson relies on the two low and two high ratings, which have held.
The Academy's card intervals, 1, 3 and longer, are a scheduler's parameters chosen from the spacing literature, not figures from this review. The review supports spacing; it does not prescribe an interval.