Douglas Rohrer

The purpose of this project is to conduct a systematic replication study of a highly promising mathematics learning intervention, interleaved practice, in 7th grade classrooms. Though psychologists have long known that interleaving and spacing improves long-term learning, the practice problems in most mathematics curricula are arranged so that the majority of problems relating to the same skill or concept are blocked together. With the interleaved practice intervention, some of the practice ...

This project assessed the efficacy and feasibility of a mathematics learning intervention known as interleaved practice. In a typical mathematics practice assignment, students see a group of problems that can be solved by the same strategy (e.g., 10 parabola problems), and this format allows students to use nearly the same strategy for every problem. With interleaved practice, different kinds of practice problems are arranged so that no two consecutive problems can be solved by the same stra...

In most U.S. mathematics textbooks, the majority of practice problems following a lesson are devoted to that same lesson. This "heavy repetition" approach gives students many problems on the same topic in immediate succession. An alternative approach is to rearrange the practice problems so that a portion of each assignment includes “interleaved" problems from previous topics. Evidence suggests that interleaving different kinds of practice problems drawn from other lessons in the textbook,...