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Interleaved Practice

• Spacing & Mixing, For Instructors, Sports Training, For Coaches, Expert Interview, Skills Training / March 16, 2016 / By Doug Rohrer

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Suppose you want to improve your golf game—say, driving and putting. If you’re like most people, you would practice all of your driving and then all of your putting (or vice versa) before calling it a day. This is called blocked practice, and it’s widely adopted throughout the world. However, as Dr. Doug Rohrer (University of South Florida) discusses in this video, it is far better for long-term learning to mix-up, or “interleave,” the skills you are trying to master, whether they are sports-related or academic. Watch to find out more.

by GoCognitive

An interview of Dr. Robert Bjork about the seductive nature of blocked practice and why it might not be the best way for you to learn.

retention Interleaving practice Blocking practice Robert Bjork Dough Rohrer Baseball Player Sports training Conceptual Learning

About the Author

Doug Rohrer

Doug Rohrer (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego) is a Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida. He is a fellow of the Psychonomic Society and the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and is currently serving on the editorial board of the journal, Educational Psychology Review. Dr. Rohrer’s research examines and assesses the effectiveness of various learning strategies—particularly those used in mathematics learning and problem solving—with the goal of identifying pedagogical techniques that improve students’ long-term retention of information learned in school.

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