The Myth of Massed Practice
By Kelly Smith and Mike Anderson, Applied Arts
After learning about evidence based reporting (EBR), the Game Development team was hooked. We dove straight into transforming Game Development into an EBR masterpiece and we failed.
Luckily, we are also engineering teachers and have learned that great success is most often preceded by failure. So, rather than be discouraged, we analyzed our failed attempt, looking for flaws and weaknesses. What we discovered led us to a redesign of the instruction and assessment of the course.
We learned that we had lost sight of the forest through the trees. We were instructing and assessing the skills to create a successful game one at a time before moving onto the next. Our intent was to isolate these skills to allow for explicit instruction, expectations, practice, and feedback. We assumed this would translate into the creation of high quality games, but it didn’t. Students struggled to see the relationships between these skills and had little practice using them simultaneously to create games. They had trees, but they weren’t able to make a forest. They needed practice doing the one thing we wanted them to do: design and develop games. It was that simple.
To achieve this we did two major things 1) we interleaved the instruction of the skills and 2) focused our assessments on learning targets associated with student’s ability to create games. The course is now structured around the creation of six fully functional games. The skills to create a game are present in each of the six games, and they increase in complexity from game 1 to game 6. This gives students more practice designing and developing games. Feedback is now communicated to students with a focus on improving and developing the skills needed to create the game. And now students are learning and practicing all the game development skills together, there are more opportunities for them to discover the interdependent relationships between these skills, further strengthening their understanding of game development.
As we worked to turnaround the Game Development course, we came across a book called “Make it Stick” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, that validated our revisions. The book compares the methods of interleaving practice versus massed practice. Interleaving practice is described as learning and practicing multiple skills simultaneously. Students practice skill a, then skill b, then skill c, then back to skill a, then to skill b, and back to skill c, etc... This varied approach “produces better mastery, longer retention, and more versatility”. The opposite method is referred to as massed practice where students learn one skill at a time and practice it until mastery before moving to the next. Massed practice is preferred by most students and teachers because rapid improvement is observed and perceived as mastery of the skill, while the method of interleaving practice is frustrating, uncomfortable, and feels like mastery takes longer. However, research shows that mastery and long-term retention are much more likely to occur if you interleave practice than if you mass it.
One particular segment of the book that stood out to us was an experiment that was conducted with the Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, baseball team’s batting practice. For several weeks, half of the team practiced in the standard way, hitting forty-five pitches, evenly divided into three sets: fastballs, curveballs, and changeups. The rest of the team’s practice regimen consisted of forty-five pitches that were randomly interspersed with the three types of pitches. During practice, it seemed as though the players focusing on one type of pitch at a time were improving performance faster than the players using a varied approach, however, during games, “players who practiced interspersed pitches displayed better hitting relative to the players who practiced one type of pitch thrown over and over”. “Make it Stick” not only validated the efforts of the Game Development team, but also provided us with a sense of relief.
The biggest impact of our course changes was seen when it was time for students to create their final game. They were challenged to create an original game of their choice; to design the game of their dreams. The students in the course prior to the revision were overwhelmed by this task and were unable to discern their ability to accomplish the tasks necessary to design and develop this game.
Now, after our instructional and assessment revisions, students have the skills, practice, and preparation to create high quality, original games. At first, we were frustrated in the new pacing of the course. It was taking students much longer to show growth toward the mastery of the skills necessary to design and develop successful games. But eventually, we began to see students making stronger connections between the varied skills they were practicing and they were better prepared to apply these skills to new situations.
Luckily, we are also engineering teachers and have learned that great success is most often preceded by failure. So, rather than be discouraged, we analyzed our failed attempt, looking for flaws and weaknesses. What we discovered led us to a redesign of the instruction and assessment of the course.
We learned that we had lost sight of the forest through the trees. We were instructing and assessing the skills to create a successful game one at a time before moving onto the next. Our intent was to isolate these skills to allow for explicit instruction, expectations, practice, and feedback. We assumed this would translate into the creation of high quality games, but it didn’t. Students struggled to see the relationships between these skills and had little practice using them simultaneously to create games. They had trees, but they weren’t able to make a forest. They needed practice doing the one thing we wanted them to do: design and develop games. It was that simple.
To achieve this we did two major things 1) we interleaved the instruction of the skills and 2) focused our assessments on learning targets associated with student’s ability to create games. The course is now structured around the creation of six fully functional games. The skills to create a game are present in each of the six games, and they increase in complexity from game 1 to game 6. This gives students more practice designing and developing games. Feedback is now communicated to students with a focus on improving and developing the skills needed to create the game. And now students are learning and practicing all the game development skills together, there are more opportunities for them to discover the interdependent relationships between these skills, further strengthening their understanding of game development.
As we worked to turnaround the Game Development course, we came across a book called “Make it Stick” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, that validated our revisions. The book compares the methods of interleaving practice versus massed practice. Interleaving practice is described as learning and practicing multiple skills simultaneously. Students practice skill a, then skill b, then skill c, then back to skill a, then to skill b, and back to skill c, etc... This varied approach “produces better mastery, longer retention, and more versatility”. The opposite method is referred to as massed practice where students learn one skill at a time and practice it until mastery before moving to the next. Massed practice is preferred by most students and teachers because rapid improvement is observed and perceived as mastery of the skill, while the method of interleaving practice is frustrating, uncomfortable, and feels like mastery takes longer. However, research shows that mastery and long-term retention are much more likely to occur if you interleave practice than if you mass it.
One particular segment of the book that stood out to us was an experiment that was conducted with the Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, baseball team’s batting practice. For several weeks, half of the team practiced in the standard way, hitting forty-five pitches, evenly divided into three sets: fastballs, curveballs, and changeups. The rest of the team’s practice regimen consisted of forty-five pitches that were randomly interspersed with the three types of pitches. During practice, it seemed as though the players focusing on one type of pitch at a time were improving performance faster than the players using a varied approach, however, during games, “players who practiced interspersed pitches displayed better hitting relative to the players who practiced one type of pitch thrown over and over”. “Make it Stick” not only validated the efforts of the Game Development team, but also provided us with a sense of relief.
The biggest impact of our course changes was seen when it was time for students to create their final game. They were challenged to create an original game of their choice; to design the game of their dreams. The students in the course prior to the revision were overwhelmed by this task and were unable to discern their ability to accomplish the tasks necessary to design and develop this game.
Now, after our instructional and assessment revisions, students have the skills, practice, and preparation to create high quality, original games. At first, we were frustrated in the new pacing of the course. It was taking students much longer to show growth toward the mastery of the skills necessary to design and develop successful games. But eventually, we began to see students making stronger connections between the varied skills they were practicing and they were better prepared to apply these skills to new situations.