Spacing Learning Events Over Time. Send me Your Examples.

In 2006, I reviewed the research on the spacing effect and published a research-to-practice report, Spacing Learning Over Time: What the Research Says...

Since then I have been buoyed by the enthusiastic response to that report and by the changes that it  engendered. More training and e-learning has been built using spacing and more and more learning software has been built that incorporates the spacing effect as an inherent part of its design. If I died today, I would at least know that I'd made a small difference in our field.

Examples Wanted

I am working on an updated version of the report to include the latest research and new examples.

If you know of any examples of the use of spacing effect, please let me know. Send me demo links or disks so that I can see for myself how the spacing effect has been used. Or, just write me an email.

Testimonials Wanted

Also, if you read the original version and want to write a short testimonial about how it changed the way you build learning, that would be awesome. Just write me an email.

One Product Example: A Cameo Appearance

Just to get your juices flowing, check out this YouTube Video produced by a company who built a product with the spacing effect in mind, Yukon Learning. Yukon has built a very nice tool to support learning using the spacing effect. The product name is Cameo and the link below will take you to the Cameo website.

You can check out Cameo at this website.

Comments

[Stephen Downes]

Why not link to the report?

[Will Thalheimer]

I took the report down until I get the new one ready. I'll have the new one done within a short time frame.

[Gordon Lam]

Will,

Thanks for posting this; I was unaware of cameo.

My company is looking at software from http://www.brainx.com/. They offer what seems to be a semantic approach, spacing the learning based on both the individual learner and the topic as well. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on their approach.

[Sharon Boller]

Will,

Another way this could be accomplished (by those using Moodle at least) is to encourage development of some post-course scenarios and have these posted as Forum discussions. "Teachers" in Moodle could also prepare - and send out - emails with these scenarios following the course and encourage blogging/discussion around them.

[Ubong Ekpo]

Hello Will,
I found your blog while doing online research on improving retention for training and have a question regarding the following connected statement with another article titled less learning more often:
"The ideal interval of time between repetitions is roughly equal to the retention interval(the time you expect learners to remember info before putting it into practice on the job). This seems to mean that if agents were expected to use the information on the job in 1 month's time or 4 month's time, then training repetions or refreshers for these topics should be delivered 1 month or 4 months inbetween? That doesn't really make much sense seeing that the material should have been repeated a number of times before the time they will actually need to recall it and use it on the job. Could you help me clear this up?
Much appreciated .
Yubi