What You Need to Know About Spaced and Interleaved Practice in Med School

Learning in Med School 101 Video Series Part 1

In our newest video series, "Learning in Med School 101," we break down some key concepts about learning medical school, including skills, strategies, and techniques we share with medical students (and those in related medical fields).

In this video, we dig into two common (although perhaps not commonly named) study strategies and their more effective counterparts. In our experience, two of the most popular ways students study are also often some of the least effective ways to study.

Of these strategies, we'll start with massed practice. Basically, this is studying one concept and really focusing only on this one topic. Typically, this method features a lot of repetition in an attempt to "burn" the information in your memory. The thing is… this kind of works because it does encode the information quickly. But it doesn't promote storage consolidation or retrieval of the information, which are the big goals of sustained, long-term study.

The next strategy is blocked practice, or when you master one topic at a time before moving on to the next without revisiting what you learned before. This is also incredibly easy to do but pretty low-yield in the long run.

But, these strategies both have some less common — but effective — counterparts.

What are spaced and interleaved practice?
Instead of massed practice, try spaced practice. This is just when learning is broken into several short sessions that are spaced out over more time. And instead of blocked practice, we recommend interleaved practice. This simply means you alternate between topics as you work towards mastery. So instead of mastering topic A before moving on to topic B, we toggle between the topics. So we'd go like ABC, ABC, ABC.

You can turn massed practice into spaced practice by adding breaks between the topic and adding some time between improves encoding, storage, and possibly retrieval. Similarly, you can turn the blocked practice into interleaved practice by mixing the topics.

Something to remember, though — there's no way to do this perfectly. And that's okay! But folding these strategies can help you get more out of the time you're spending in your study sessions.

Видео What You Need to Know About Spaced and Interleaved Practice in Med School канала STATMed Learning