6 Massed Trials
Definition: Multiple opportunities for supported skill practice are provided together, one after the other, in a singular learning session.
Rationale: Students often need repeated practice to learn and perfect a skill or task. Using massed trial, often combined with prompting support can help to increase motor and cognitive memory of the steps and sequence for increased automaticity.
Ways to Support Students:
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- Massed trials can be used for a discrete (i.e., one step) or multi-step task. In the case of multi-step tasks, this is often used in conjunction with a task analysis.
- Visual supports or other prompts are often helpful to support learning and memory in massed trials.
- It’s important to find a good balance between too little and too many sessions in one sitting. Students should end on a positive note and not be pushed to complete too many sessions in one sitting.
- Pay attention to the student’s affect during the session and provide sufficient feedback and reinforcement (e.g., “good job”) to help the student know how they are progressing.
- In some cases, it can be helpful to have a visual list of the number of sessions in a massed trial and cross each out when finished to help the student anticipate how much work remains.
Case Study
Student: Grade 12 student
Content: Gym class- weightlifting
Problem: The student is having trouble setting the correct weight using the pin on the leg press machine.
Solution: The teacher asks the student to set the weight to 25 kg. With support the student uses the pin to set the weight. The teacher praises the student and takes the pin out to repeat the practice exercise. This is done 4 times, each with less and less support until the student does it independently on the last time.
Professional Resources:
- Instructions on discrete trial training from NPDC with description on massed trials: https://csesa.fpg.unc.edu/sites/csesa.fpg.unc.edu/files/ebpbriefs/DTT_Steps_0.pdf
- Research comparison between mass and interspersed trials: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bin.1396
