{"id":20788,"date":"2022-05-05T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/?p=20788"},"modified":"2022-04-26T16:48:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T20:48:17","slug":"small-teaching-interleaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2022\/05\/05\/small-teaching-interleaving\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Teaching: Interleaving"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

3rd post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series

\"\"Small Teaching<\/strong> by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students\u2019 learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang\u2019s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.

\u201cA rose by any other name\u2026\u201d (from Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)<\/strong><\/p>\r\n



Interleaving<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Lang had to call it something, so interleaving it is. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed that interleaving didn\u2019t involve some sort of quantum-level warped space-time learning technique. The truth is a bit more mundane as Lang explained interleaving as, \u201c\u2026 the practice of spending some time learning one thing and then pausing to concentrate on learning a second thing before having quite mastered that \ufb01rst thing, and then returning to the \ufb01rst thing, and then moving onto a third thing, and then returning to the second thing, and so forth. In short, it involves the process of both spacing and mixing learning activities\u2014 the spacing happening by virtue of the mixing\u201d<\/strong> (Lang, 2016, p. 68). That\u2019s not as cool as a tachyon generator powered by a bucket of dilithium, but infinitely more practical.<\/p>\r\n

Lang noted the combination of interleaving and retrieval (covered in an earlier blog linked below) implies that all major exams should be cumulative<\/strong> (cue the student groans). This does not mean that the third major exam should be evenly divided between the material from the first two exams and the material from the third unit, but that each exam should harken back to what has previously been learned and assessed. The revisiting of material shouldn\u2019t be limited to major exams either. Lang proposed three ways to work this concept into your classroom instruction:<\/p>\r\n