Interleaved Practice
category
Interleaved practice is the technique of mixing different topics, problem types, or subjects within a single study session — as opposed to blocked practice, which exhausts all content on one topic before moving to the next. While blocked practice feels more productive, interleaving produces consistently superior long-term retention and the ability to discriminate between problem types and apply the correct strategy.
Role
Interleaving feels harder and less effective in the moment — which is precisely why almost no one does it voluntarily and why it works. The difficulty encountered during interleaved study (called 'desirable difficulty' in cognitive science) is itself the mechanism of deeper encoding. Students who study using blocked practice consistently outperform interleaved-study students on immediate tests — but are consistently outperformed by them weeks later when retention is measured. Almost no school teaches this distinction.