In my opinion, one of the most significant failures of modern education is the lack of emphasis on spaced repetition. It's really a shame that while we have lessons on a wide range of topics, including the latest social justice causes, there is one technique that can be truly life-changing, yet it's often not taught until people reach adulthood and have to discover it on their own.
I frequently hear this comment about spaced repetition, but I’m not sure how it would be different than modern education. In physics, we started with unit analysis, but it continued being a factor throughout the course. Then we learned kinematic, which didn’t disappear once we went into dynamics and both were constantly used with electrostatics. Similarly, in language courses, you start with a single conjugation in present indicative. You build out from there, but the present tense would still show up on every assignment, even after you’ve gone through pluperfect subjunctive. Needless to say, algebra courses freely called back to basic arithmetic and calculus called back to algebra.
I feel like I must be attacking a straw man here, as you’re not the only individual I’ve met who found spaced repetition revelatory, but I’m still not sure what I’m missing.
Spaced repetition is particularly effective when it comes to memorizing a large volume of information quickly and retaining it for the long term. This is applicable to a wide range of subjects, including history (facts and dates), physics (formulas and laws), mathematics (formulas and laws), and many others.
There is often a misconception that subjects like physics are solely about understanding and reasoning, but at the school level, it is necessary to have a solid grasp of the laws and formulas. Without this foundation, it is like attempting to write a program in a programming language without knowing the syntax. You have to stop and look up the syntax for each line of code, slowing down the entire process. Some things simply need to be memorized to achieve a certain level of proficiency.
People are already doing this though. If you are a historian, you are already having spaced repetition on your subject of interest, since every book you pick up from the field will cite the seminal information everyone knows in the field. You are constantly being refreshed on it. Likewise in physics or math, if you specialize in some niche, you are constantly reviewing the groundwork and in all likelihood reading a good deal of review articles as well. That being said, there's no point in the professor of history reviewing their calculus from undergrad, and there's no point in the physics researcher to review all the central dates and names of world history every few years. If you strive to have the breadth of an ocean you won't have time for much depth. There's just a finite amount of information one can intake a day.
> Without this foundation, it is like attempting to write a program in a programming language without knowing the syntax. You have to stop and look up the syntax for each line of code, slowing down the entire process. Some things simply need to be memorized to achieve a certain level of proficiency.
This is pretty much the opposite of my experience. I have learned many programming languages and never found it useful to memorize any syntax. I read the book/docs/tutorial once, and then reference it (or code I previously wrote) just-in-time whenever I need a reminder, and find that whatever I use repeatedly is quickly committed to memory. I don't see how memorization could make this faster.
This is definitely not my experience with space repetition. I really wanted it to work for me but I found it didn't help at all with retaining anything. I was using anki.
Curious: How many cards did you create? And how often do you test yourself? You really need to do it daily with few gaps for it to be very effective.
I would recommend not giving up but instead altering your approach. I tried spaced repetition multiple times in grad school and completely failed at it. I then tried again over 10 years later (and much older!) and it was really like attaining a super power. The success is even more remarkable because compared to my university days, I am much less actively using the material in the cards.
In my case, the difference between the two attempts was sticking to the daily schedule[1] and getting better at creating relevant cards.
And keep in mind: SR aids in recall, not in understanding. There have been times where I look at the cards on a certain topic and do very poorly (consistently). I then realize it's partly because some key understanding has been lost. I then need to do a proper study session (get the book out, read for understanding, perhaps do some problems). After that study session, I get good on the cards and stay good for a long time. In the last 4 years, I've needed to do this perhaps twice.
[1] Yes, I do stop from time to time, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
I created cards as I was learning the topic. And I was doing it daily or twice daily.
I certainly wanted it to work, when I first learned about it I thought it was the answer. But I seemed to get worse and more stressed out because I wasn't learning anything.
I'm not too fussed about it not working for me. I don't think there is a one size style of learning.
This has been my experience as well (especially with Anki), though I've always felt like my ability to memorize information to be poor in general. In my experience, I find it easier to memorize things rather through brute force/frequent repetition. To use memorizing foreign language vocabulary as an example; repeating words to myself, listening, or writing them out for 30-60 minutes everyday or every few days (as opposed to spreading out fewer terms over, say, two weeks). The conjecture I have is that my brain commits to memory more heavily based on frequency/intensity during short intervals of time rather than long intervals of time, but it's just a guess.
Not sure if I'm just an outlier, but I think you're right that many learning heuristics aren't one-size-fits-all. Hope you can find something that's effective (and enjoyable) for you. :)
In all of my physics classes (high school, undergrad, grad), we were allowed to have a formula sheet with whatever we wanted written on it. Furthermore, important equations would just be given to us on the test, in case you forgot to write it. Even so, test scores were usually below 50% (corrected by curving after). Memorizing formulas to study would have been a laughable waste of time, the better approach is to practice a wide variety of problems.
If one has to look up a formula, can we say that they have a good understanding of it? If one had to look up a multiplication table each time they calculated something, how far would they have gone in learning?
I think you have it backward. All that time/energy wasted memorizing multiplications could have been used to understand more complicated topics. It's a cool party trick but it won't make you better at solving problems past high school level. I would prefer to work with someone who understand the concepts well and how to apply them than someone who can recall 32x9 or 10 digits of pi from memory.
When people complain about the difficulty of their college math courses or the math problems they solve at work, I can assure that it's not because they had a hard time remembering the answer to a multiplication. In a lot of cases, the equations they are trying to solve don't even have numbers in them. And when there are numbers, you won't be able to calculate them mentally because they won't simplify like they do in a no-calculator math exam.
You might not have realized, but a lot of the work when designing a no-calculator exam is to make sure people can compute the numbers mentally. When you step out in the real world, 32x9 becomes into 32.091x9.1^1.1. It turns ugly real fast when you have to deal with real numbers instead of a carefully crafted exam question.
I would have to look up Maxwell's equations right now if I needed them. Nevertheless, I am confident I have a good understanding of them. What I have in my head are important relationships (conservation laws, symmetries, wave solutions, etc.), not the exact mathematical formulas.
to add to this, I think spaced repetition is to learning, the way typing speed is to programming. It's good at solving for the minor frustrations and slowdowns that stand in between you & the complex reasoning to get to a solution.
When I can edit code via vim keybindings quickly, I can move things, sketch ideas, swap entire blocks, and so on, easily. That lets me check and look at things, and allow my whole brain to be spent on higher level things like looking at the control flow, applying aesthetic considerations to simplify, or whatever.
I failed Calc 3 as a college freshman because I had taken high school calc as a junior, leaving a full year between. I understood the ideas of calc 3, but couldn't remember the basic stuff like integrating tan() or whatever. (and I also didn't have any study discipline at the time to actually solve for my situation). So I couldn't answer the questions on a test even though I knew the steps I would need to take past a roadblock. Solvable with study, which would have been effective in the form of spaced repetition flash cards.
You could call the way the curriculum is organised "spaced repetition", but this isn't personalised and thus missing the feedback part of spaced repetition. Generally, children aren't taught the method of spaced repetition itself. "Learning how to learn" should be its own subject early on.
This seems to be changing a bit. I have two children in a US public elementary school. The teachers use various apps to have children review mathematics facts. The apps allow children to move at their own pace and also incorporates some spaced repetition. (Though teachers seem to pick whatever app they like and the apps are of varying quality.)
I really hope you're correct. It feels a lot like the debate between phonics and whole language to me, where how we teach makes it difficult for the average student to learn. People here are discussing Bloom's Taxonomy and higher levels of learning, but many students struggle with even the most basic concepts.
IMO you kind of do get spaced repetition in modern education. As you specialize, you frequently have major classes where its "first week or two we dig into what you already should know, then we really dive into the deeper stuff." Or you take up a job, and maybe you have to refer to that one topic from class years ago twice a year, that's spaced repetition.
In a sense, the nature of a specialized career forces you to engage in spaced repetition of the things you need to know, and allows you to safely ignore the stuff you never need to touch again. If we encouraged spaced repetition on each and everything, I would be wasting a ton of time on subjects that ultimately aren't relevant, at the expense of free time and maximizing time spent on the relevant bits.
This is the perspective many people have, but in my experience it falls short. To quibble with your examples:
> As you specialize, you frequently have major classes where its "first week or two we dig into what you already should know, then we really dive into the deeper stuff."
Yes, they do this. But I've often seen (especially at the undergrad level) instructors avoiding topics or challenging problems because it required material beyond just the basic math/calculus (e.g. some trig identities, differential equations, etc). So in practice, this is not happening.
> Or you take up a job, and maybe you have to refer to that one topic from class years ago twice a year, that's spaced repetition.
It's even worse at work, where you don't have a teacher to enforce things. Suggestions get shot down all the time because coworkers have forgotten some (even trivial) things they learned at university, and they do not want to review it. I've seen this happens where they avoid basic Calc I stuff, where they avoid stuff in data structures (e.g. union find). They'll implement a poor solution, and convince management it can't be done better. Or that it can but it's a long term risk because if that one person who knows "union find" leaves, we won't be able to hire someone to maintain it, etc.
> If we encouraged spaced repetition on each and everything, I would be wasting a ton of time on subjects that ultimately aren't relevant, at the expense of free time and maximizing time spent on the relevant bits.
Michael Nielsen did an analysis of this after using Anki for a bunch of years: The average amount of time spent on a card over one's lifetime is about 10 minutes. And so he used that as a metric when encountering any new piece of information: "If I don't learn it, do I think I will spend more than 10 minutes looking it up in the future?" If yes, he'll make a flashcard for it. If not, he won't.
But yes, I definitely have disabled cards on topics that I don't think I'll want to touch again in the future.
what do you call the two midterms, the final, the reading, the lecture, and the worksheets? all cover the same material at different times.
if anything, it's higher level education (4, 5, and 600 level college courses) where i saw a lack of spaced repetition, or any sort of learning beyond the professor presenting the material. I guess it's expected that at that point you have your learning technique figured out.
That's precisely my point. There should be a dedicated subject called "Effective Learning" or something similar, where students are equipped with the necessary tools to continue learning at a higher level after leaving school. The fact that individuals are unaware of these skills later in life is evidence of the education system's shortcomings.
Having an intensive course on a subject over 3-6 months doesn't really let you do much in terms of spaced repetition. If a course is a year long and material is briefly visited, then often revisited, that could work, but even with a year long course, if you see the material on a quiz, a test and (a little bit) in the final that's not even close to optimal.
In post-secondary education, the amount of material, typically due to the speed or density of delivery, may reveal that your learning technique isn't working. For example you may spend too much time on one topic rather than on a topic more heavily weighted in an exam.
I'm not sure but by spread out I would assume multi-year. What you described is still problematic. I believe this is why mixed grade classrooms worked out so well because this was inherently unavoidable.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like spaced repetition is rather limited to the bottom two tiers of bloom's taxonomy. Can you flash-cards your way towards being effective at making the changes you want to see in the world?
Using spaced repetition is not the same as replacing all other learning methods with spaced repetition.
Just because spaced repetition isn't good for everything doesn't mean it shouldn't be used for what it is good at. It's good for remembering the specifics of things that you have already learned and understood.
No, you can not. But Bloom's taxonomy is hierarchical, so covering the first two rungs is very important and necessary for the steps after that. Spaced repetition systems allow you to make sure those bases are covered in an optimal way.
Pretty much this. Essentially, the bottom two tiers serve as the fundamental basis that ought to be robust and sturdy, but frequently end up being the place where students' academic progress comes to a halt.
