Cramming not helpful in the long run

Students who cram their lessons cannot retain much in the long run as compared with those who space out their study sessions over time. People learn naturally in everyday life without having to cram things. For example, infants do not hear a particular word 25 times in an hour, but instead hear it repeatedly over time, and learn it. Previous studies have shown that spacing out study sessions over time is more effective than clubbing them together in one big cram session, but the ideal spacing time has not been established. Researchers from the University of California at San Diego reviewed studies on how the duration of a study session and the spacing between study sessions affected how well people retained the material studied. They found that people who over-learned a topic, i.e., who kept on studying material after they knew it thoroughly, fared better than those who did not, if they were tested a week later. However, if they were tested four weeks later, they had no advantage over people who moved on to another topic after they had mastered the study material. Thus, the findings indicated that over-learning simply provides very little bang for the buck. Instead, it makes more sense for people to devote this extra time to other material. Spacing out the study sessions over time varied with the amount of time people needed to retain the information. When people were to be tested in 10 days, a one-day interval between study sessions was the best; when they needed to retain the information for six months, the ideal spacing was about a month. The findings also showed that current classroom approaches and textbook designs might not be facilitating long-term learning. For example, it made more sense for students to learn 10 vocabulary words a week and review 10 more, rather than trying to learn 20 new words a week. Similarly, math problem sets, rather than focusing entirely on the material just learnt, should include a handful of problems on the new material with several review problems. Thus, while cramming and massing can help students achieve their short-term goal of passing a test, it is less likely that it will help them retain what they have learnt for the long term. However, children cannot be expected to change their habits overnight unless the teachers, parents and the textbook writers take the initiative to change the methods of rote learning.