Supporting Interleaving

Below are various means of supporting interleaving. You can build some of these assets and interactive opportunities into your courses and you can share these ideas with students so that they have a means of building concrete examples into their own study sessions.

Customizable Tools to Support Interleaving

These tools have been designed to be customizable by faculty, and they can be embedded directly into your LMS content. For further information on how to utilize these tools in your LMS see the Interactive-Components page.

Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple choice questions are a quick and simple way to assess learning and provide prompt feedback to students. With multiple choice questions, students select one correct option from a list of possible answers.

Multiple Choice Quiz Tool Exemplar

Tips for Writing Multiple Choice Questions

• Structure the question so that the stem provides a cue for the student. The options help the learner to identify the correct response through recognition.
• Carefully selected multiple choice options promote learning of information related to that on the questions. Provide 3-4 options for each question, so that the question is neither too easy to guess or too time consuming to read. All options should be similar difficulty; do not include silly options as they distract from the learning.
• Avoid the use of “none of the above” options. None of the above exposes the student only to incorrect options and does not provide an opportunity for the student to identify and learn the correct response.

Multi-select Questions

Similar to multiple choice questions, multi-select questions require students to select one or more correct options from a list of answers.

Multi-select Choice Quiz Tool Exemplar

Tips for Writing Multi-select Questions

• Include the phrase, “Select all that apply” in the question text so that students know that more than one option may be correct.
• Structure the question so that the stem provides a cue for the student. The options help the learner to identify the correct responses through recognition.
• Provide 3-4 options for each question, so that the question is neither too easy to guess or too time consuming to read. All options should be similar difficulty; do not include silly options as they distract from the learning.
• Avoid the use of “NOT” or “FALSE” questions as these make the question more confusing to learners.

EdTech Tools to Support Interleaving

There are many EdTech tools that can support you in embedding interleaving into the learning experiences you create. In addition, making students aware of some of the simpler tools below can also support them in building strategies to support more effective independent learning.

Using Interleaving Outside the Digital Space

To support students in building their own tool box of study strategies, encourage students to engage in the some of the following activities as they are preparing for your assessments.

Tips to Support Interleaving

The following are some quick tips that you can use when you are building your learning experiences to embed interleaving directly into the learning.

1. Introduce a topic or type of problem, then provide blocked practice focusing solely on that topic or problem type. Once the next topic or type of problem has been presented and practiced, provide additional practice that interleaves the new topic/problem with previous content.  You can continue to do this throughout an entire unit or even an entire course.
2. Interleaving works best when comparing similar topics or problems, because it helps students to learn how to distinguish between them. For topics or problems that are dissimilar, blocking can help students to focus on the similarities within the topic.
3. Present a visual of the different topics simultaneously so that students can compare them and identify the differences. This could be part of your standard content teaching time so the class engages with the presented comparison together, or use an active learning strategy (ex. Think-pair-share, Four Corners, Travelling File) to have students generate their own comparisons in smaller groups.
4. Reorder questions on activities that can be repeated, such as practice quizzes or embedded learning activities, to encourage deeper learning than rote memorization. For multiple choice and multi-select questions, also reorder the options in each question.

Checking Your Knowledge

References

Photography on this page used with permission from the Durham College Online Photo Database.

Dunlosky, J. (2013). Strengthening the Student Toolbox: Study Strategies to Boost Learning. American Educator, 37(3), 12–21. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1021069.pdf

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Karpicke, J. D., & O’Day, G. M. (in press). Elements of effective learning. In M. J. Kahana & A. D. Wagner (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Human Memory, Volume II: Applications. Oxford University Press. https://learninglab.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/inpress_Karpicke_ODay_Oxford_Handbook.pdf

Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2007). Increasing retention without increasing study time. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 183-186. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00500.x

The Learning Scientists. (n.d.). Interleaving. The Learning Scientists. https://www.learningscientists.org/interleaving

Weinstein, Y., Madan, C.R. & Sumeracki, M.A. (2018). Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-017-0087-y

Weinstein Y., & Smith, M. (2016, August 11). Learn to study using… interleaving. The Learning Scientists. https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/8/11-1

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