Comparison Of Massed And Distributed Practice Strategies Of Learning

Integrate/explain your findings with respect to the literature you drew upon in the introduction. Comment specifically on similarities or differences of our findings from previous studies.

Critique the study including a discussion of the internal and external validity of thestudy (review your notes/reading on research methodology). Importantly, you should discuss any relevant limitations that should be considered when deciding if and how to implement distributed practice.

In the contemporary world, the education sector is faced with a critical decision on when and how to access the study information. In this study, 239 participants out of 274 participants were involved in the online assessment to determine superiority of the distributed practice strategy of learning as opposed to massed practice strategy. The study was designed into two parts where the first part was done in 5 minutes and it involved the distribution of the two study types into the participants. Half of the participants were allocated distributed whereas the other half was given massed practice strategy. The second part involved the participants to take 25 minutes in multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank tests. The performances in the two tests were recorded correctly and the data were compared and evaluated to assess the two hypotheses of the study. The study finally found that the distributed practice contribute greatly to the higher overall performance of the participants in the two tests. The study also concluded that participants under massed practice achieved better in the multiple choice trial as compared to the fill-in-the-blank test. They also did well in the multiple choice tests compared to how the distributed practice participants performed. 

The education system is faced by the critical decision of how and when to study information. The timing of the study and its effects on the memory retention has been the topic under research for many decades (Carpenter, Capeda, Rohrer, Kang& Pashler. 2012). In regard to this two learning strategies namely; distributed and massed practices have been researched to establish their effects in learning on the basis of retention and retrieval of the studied knowledge.

Distributed practice or spaced strategy is a learning technique, in which learning is distributed into a several short sittings over a long span of time. According to Rohrer and Taylor. (2006)Human beings and animals learn things more effectively when they are in several sessions over a long span of time. According to Stanger. (2012) each time the brain encounters a new item during the review, there is a mental attempted retrieval, and if the retrieval is successful the memory becomes more resistant for forgetting. In spaced practice, gaps between the learning items make the retrieval effortful, hence benefiting the memory.

Massed practice, on the other hand, involves studying once over a large period of time. A good example is studying overnight for in a preparation of an exam the following day. Massed practice, in general, is done less frequently, but for large periods of time. Yang, Potts& Shanks. (2018) stated that while this practice may be efficient, and in most cases capable of assisting student pass an exam, it is not a greater solution for long-term. Information memorized this way is forgotten once the exam is over. This strategy has been recorded to have been giving a long impression in the professional environment.  The strategy has been for many years used as a survival mechanism for students who are caught by the time during exams session (Rohrer &Taylor 2006).

Distributed Practice Strategy

Rohrer. (2016), in his research also reported a significant connection of the massed practice to higher performance in the multiple choice questions. He attributed that students who practice massed strategy in mathematics tests performed slightly higher than their peers who were practising distributed strategy. This finding was, however, not justifiable because the research did not explain the reason behind the finding. There was no any clear link that connected the two variables hence this finding has been over the years challenged by a number of researchers.

Rohrer and Taylor (2006), further stated that there is no intellectual capacity that is very significant than the ability to learn and retain the information. The advantages of education are mostly lost when the material is not remembered. Any learning criterion should be judged by participants’ performance of retention of the content. According to Haq et al. (2015), Distributed practice is preferably better than the massed or overlearning technique in the students' understanding and retention of the mathematics content. He associated this benefit with the phenomena called the spacing effect, which is very important in the human being when it comes to learning. Carpenter, Capeda, Rohrer, Kang& Pashler. (2012) associated the spacing effect benefits to the longer spacing gaps between the sessions of learning.

Learning in this regard requires critical thinking skills. Fill-in-the-blank and multiple question tests do not require the same level of higher level thinking skills. The previous test is associated with a higher level of thinking hence it engage the participants in reasoning. This in return leads to great retention and retrieval of the information. The latter strategy is associated with memorization among the participants. This strategy discourages mental retrieval among the students hence less preferred by educationists (Schutte et al. 2015). Fill-in-the-blank test engages the brain effectively leading to more capacity retention of the information among many students.

According to Rohrer (2015), mastering a huge body of knowledge or set of skills is a challenge considering the limits on the human beings’ cognitive resources. This research indicates that the final test performance improves with the number of repeated retrieval opportunities and with an increase in the proportion of practice tests. The tests preferred here are fill-in-the-blank rather than the multiple questions.  Testing strategy affects holistically the retention and retrieval outcomes among the students and should be well thought off (Haq & Kodak). Retrieval rate among the two test is not affected by the groups of people such as gender and age. Retrieval rate is strictly affected by the learning and testing strategies applied.

Massed Practice Strategy

1. It is hypothesized that the distributed practice will lead to better performance than massed practice in both Fill-in-the-blank and multiple question tests.
2. It is predicted that massed practice will lead to a better performance in fill-in-the-blank test compared to multiple questions test.

Initially, this research included 274 psychology students who enrolled in an online assessment. This was done purely on psychology research experience program of Swinburne. The participants partook in the exchange for the credit for the course at this program

Out of 274 students who enrolled for the study, 35 of them did not finish the study, hence leading to the automatic removal of their data from the data set. The 239 remaining participants included 27.62% men, 70.71% women, and 1.67% unidentified. Age for the participants was ranging from eighteen to sixty-five years. Mean age was 21.34 years and the standard deviation was 3.12

The following list of material was provided to all participant in regard to this study:

1. Study materials. Every participant was obligated to study and understood the material in the research methods chapter of the second edition (p.36-72).  
2. Test materials for the fill-in-the-blank test condition where participants were tested with 20 item test.
3. Test materials for the multiple –choice test condition. This also included a 20- item multiple- choice tests.
4. Instructions to massed practice condition. The instruction required the participants to spent six hours reading the provided reading material on a single sitting with no any interruption, apart from restroom or nourishment breaks.
5. Instruction to the distributed practice strategy. Participants were guided to utilize two hours reading the provided reading papers on three succeeding days. On each day, the participants were not supposed to interrupt the study time, apart from the restroom or drinks breaks.
6. Demographical questions content. This required the partakers to specify their age and specify their sex on an open-ended basis.

The whole study was done under the approval of Swinburne University Human Research Ethics Committee (SUHREC). It was made clear to all the participants before the study that the participants were allowed to withdraw from the study without any penalty or fear discrimination whatsoever.

Each of the participants was provided with the consent information where they read the declaration and agreed to partake the study.

Then all the partakers signed up to take the assessment through the Program. They began the first part of the assessment through qualtrics (computer software; qualtrics.com). This part involved three major tasks; allocating participants to study techniques conditions namely massed or distributed practice strategy, giving them the applicable instructions, and finally providing answers to demographic questions. Every participant had only 5 minutes to finish this part of the study.

Participants were assigned randomly to a study strategy such that half of the number got the massed practice study guidelines, while the other half were given distributed practice strategy guidelines.

All the members were directed to log into Qualtrics in the next three week. After logging in, Qualtrics randomly assigned half of the members to take the fill-in-the-blank assessment, whereas the other half completed the multiple-choice test. Both fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice tests contained 20 items. Participants were given 25 minutes to finish the assessment in Part 2 of the study.

Finally, all the participants were briefed again at the completion of the study about the intent and purpose of the assessment, manipulations, and the academics’ hypotheses

Figure 1 represents results obtained in the study to compare the superiority of massed and distributed practices strategies of learning. The values in the figure are in mean percentage of the performance in each type of the two test as per the learning strategies. Massed practice condition performances were 61.18% and 85.15% in fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice tests respectively. The overall performance in massed practice was 73.50% as indicated in the figure.

Research on Massed and Distributed Practice Strategies

On the other hand, the figure contains the results of distributed practice learning strategy. The figure indicates an overall performance of 81.80% in both types of test. This is generally far much better than the massed practice. Distributed strategy performance on both tests is 77.35% and 82.95 fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice tests.

The Y-axis on the figure indicates the percentage performance among the two groups of participants in the study. In the study, 121 participants participated in the massed practice condition whereas 118 participants were randomly assigned to the distributed practice condition summing up to 239 participants as recorded. The results indicated a high performance in multiple-choice test in both massed and distributed practice conditions.

Fill-in-the-blank test recorded slightly lower performance compared to the multiple choice test. However, the small differences in the performance in both study conditions in the test, there are huge differences in the overall performances. 

Basing on the first hypothesis, the results conform to the hypothesis which suggested that the distributed practice leads to overall higher performance compared to the massed practice. This was evident in the result since both conditions provided the results of 81.80% and 73.50% respectively. As it had been aforementioned earlier in the literature review part of this paper, Distributed or spaced practice stimulate a spaced effect on the mental capacity of the human being. This phenomenon contributes to higher retention and retrieval of knowledge during the test (Vlach &Sandhofer.2012). The participants were required to read and have a break after every two hours on three consecutive days. This spacing was very effective in the stimulation of retention and retrieval of the information among the participants who participated in the distributed practice condition.

Low overall performances among the participants who participated in the massed practice condition can be associated with knowledge and content being forgotten during the test (Roediger & Pyc, 2012). Mental capacity is improved over a long period of time and six (6) hours could not have been enough to prepare the brain for the tests. The result conforms effectively to Sakaguchi, Arase and Komachi. (2013) whose research indicated that undergraduate students who practice distributed strategy in their learning tend to perform better in examinations. This is in comparison to their peers who tend to adopt massed practice during the last periods of exam preparations (Son &Simon, 2012).

Considering the second hypothesis, it is true that the massed practice led to better performance in multiple-choice questions compared to the fill-in-the-blank test. This group of participants also perform better than distributed practice participants in the multiple choice test. Higher performance in the multiple choice test among this group may be associated with cramming and memorization (Yu, Park, Berg & Berg, 2015). Keeping in mind that multiple choice test does not engage the mind in critical thinking, massed practice group may have found this test easier to answer hence leading to better performance in the test. According to Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham. (2013), multiple tests are the best choice in the determination of the mental retrieval and cognitive capacity.  

Findings of the Study

In general, the results are in constant agreement with the previous researches that link the best overall performance in the tests with the distributed practice but not the massed strategy. Specifically, the results revealed a long-term retrieval and retention of the knowledge was directly associated with the distributed practice as opposed to the massed practice.

This study could have been very reliable and effective if the time span for distributed practice was increased. Three days, according to the previous research Neill, Rehfeldt, Ninness, Munoz and Mellor. (2015) are not enough to stimulate the brain effectively for spaced or distributed effects….. Stated that for a distributed effect to be vividly clear, the practice should be long enough. He further recorded at least seven days are required to examine the mental retention and retrieval for the distributed strategy of learning. The study further suggested that massed and distributed practice evaluation/assessments are best performed in the sitting paper rather than on the online platforms. Online platforms may not give clear indications of the real results since the whole activity may have been influenced by many factors during the two assessments (Goosens, Camp, Verkoeijen & Tabbers, 2014).

Despite that limitation, the study was done in a professional manner and it represents the real picture of the comparison of the two methods of the study in the learning institutions. The results are in perfect match with the previous researches performed on the same topic. A clear connection can be drawn from the variables. The variables affect each other hence driving this study to the research questions which are answered extensively.

Conclusion

This study comes to a conclusion that both the hypotheses are true. Distributed practice conditions contribute greatly to higher performance in both fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions. The study concluded that this can be associated with the mental stimulation improvement as it is contributed by the spaced or distributed effect in the brain. Massed practice strategy leads to short-term effects in learning and it can only lead to higher performance in the multiple choice tests that do not call for a higher critical thinking. Distributed practice strategy leads to long-term effects and in this regard, students should be encouraged to adopt this strategy in preparation for exams and also for the preparation of their next careers development. The choice is very important when it comes to making critical decisions like study technique to use. The education system should make a choice that would holistically benefit the majority of the students on the long-term basis.

Conclusion

References

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