Alright. So we’re on the topic of interleaving and it’s getting some kind of limelight in some article I came across about how amazing it was when they tried to use this method (that’s actually about 30 years old) in subject matters like geo solids, abstract art as well as motor skills.
So basically, I’ll be watching videos of Robert Bjork from the YouTube channel GoCognitive and basically typing out what he’s saying.
Ok I tried to google who Dr. Robert Bjork is and apparently there is an entire page on what he does and this research on applying Cognitive Psychology to enhance educational practice. So here begins my own reflection of the page.
Something caught my attention: the words ‘desirable difficulties’. This reminded me, for some weird reason, of when I was learning grammar, syntax and phrases a few years ago when I was training to be an English teacher. I remember that I had learnt this set of information about noun phrases, verb phrases and subject, object, ditransitive verbs and what not. And I remember thinking to myself, “Ok, let’s see if I can apply it to any text that I see.” To the annoyance of my family and peers, I kept analyzing texts and sentences just to test myself. And this happened rather frequently at first, followed by moments of when I was in the mood. And so I’m recalling how much spacing and self-testing I must have done, so much so that I am still able to retain as well as recall this knowledge.
The only difference that I see is that, in interleaving, there are two different types of information applied. Hmm. Or is that a difference? Maybe the various types of information (grammar, syntax, phrases) were all different but used together and in seeing those knowledge in my self-tests of analysis of texts, I was already in fact using interleaving. Yeah, I think that’s what happened.
This sentence made me excited because this is where my interest of figuring out how to make students learn English (or any language) faster and better: “The goal of these studies is to determine the type of instructions and study conditions that will foster accurate judgement of learning, which can lead to better predictions of future performance and optimal self-initiated study practices.
I) Retrieval as a Memory Modifier: Using our Memory Shapes our Memory
So Dr. Bjork is saying in this video (the first on the page) that using your memory repeatedly, will improve it, but only if you use the right methods. He is actually advocating testing, or as he says “Retrieval Practices” (RPs), as part of instruction as well as restudy.
He says because RPs induce memory retrieval, it is actually become a diagnostic tool for students to effectively measure how much he or she has studied and what more needs to be studied. It basically provides the student with information that they have learnt and not learnt.
Additionally, RPs also enhance subsequent study sessions. This is definitely a plus point for teachers and Dr. Bjork says that teachers, coaches, trainers can actually include this as part of their instruction or programs. Some examples of RP that he gave included low stake testing, clicker questions and pop quizzes.
I feel that the more important part of what he said was that RPs can, and in my opinion, should be, self-initiated on the students’ and learner’s part. He said that merely reading a text will not only give you an illusion that you know the material but it is highly ineffective in the information of whether you know what you’ve read. Instead, with a partner and doing quizzes, you induce memory retrieval more frequently and thus shapes your memory better for retrieval in the long term.
The following are the words on the page, which are supported by references by the works of the researchers including Dr. Bjork:
Testing effect Taking a test often does more than assess knowledge; tests can also provide opportunities for learning. When information is successfully retrieved from memory, its representation in memory is changed such that it becomes more recallable in the future (e.g., R. A. Bjork, 1975); and this improvement is often greater than the benefit resulting from additional study (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Interestingly, taking a test can modify memory for information that was not explicitly tested initially (provided that the untested information is related to the tested information in certain ways; Anderson, R. A. Bjork, & E. L. Bjork, 1994; Chan, McDermott, & Roediger, 2006; Hamaker, 1986). Sometimes later recall of this untested information is improved (see, e.g., Hamaker, 1986), but sometimes it is impaired (see, e.g., Anderson et al., 1994), often dependent upon the type of relationship existing between tested and untested information (e.g., Little, Storm, & E. L. Bjork, 2011).
MCQ Questions with effective choice of incorrect answers can lead to the spontaneous recall of information with regards to the incorrect alternatives, thus leading the MCQ test to serve as a learning even for both the test and untested information
The Million In My Head 