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interleaving

concept · in 4 sources (2018)

Mixing topics and grouping facts into categories while studying, to deepen understanding.

Sources by year: 2018: 4

Also known as: categorisation

Also named in the threads: Ali says his next video in the evidence-based revision series will be about spaced repetition.

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

active recall (3) · spaced repetition (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2018

  • 2018-04-04 · How to study for exams - Evidence-based revision tips — announcement: Ali says future videos in the series will cover practice testing, spaced repetition and interleaved practice. — 00:19:49
  • 2018-04-09 · How to Study for Exams - Spaced Repetition · Evidence-based revision tips — Ali links his scattergun approach to interleaved practice, a technique with some evidence in the literature: do a little of one thing and switch to something else before mastering it. (hedged) — 00:18:14
    • Ali's buzzword for revision is "quantity rather than quality": getting through many topics matters more than covering a few in detail, because the active recall builds the connections in the brain. — 00:20:14
  • 2018-04-14 · Last Minute Study Tips, Flashcards, Essays & Maths - Exam Revision Q&A with Cambridge students — recommendation: Ali says studies of maths students found that interleaving different problem types improves performance by quite a lot, so a maths revision day should mix a bit of trigonometry, Pythagoras, algebra and shapes. — 00:21:02
  • 2018-06-12 · Study with me + The Magic of Categorisation - Cambridge University medical student VLOG #38 — Ali calls categorisation a magical technique and, after spaced repetition and active recall, probably the third most important exam technique: categorise anything you can, whenever you can. (hedged) — 00:01:13
    • For his neurological systems review Ali grouped the eight or nine questions he needed to ask into four categories, so that he only had to learn four things rather than nine. — 00:01:13
    • Working through role-play cases in an OSCE preparation book, Ali writes possible diagnoses roughly on his iPad: the aim is active recall, not notes, and writing makes categorising easier than doing it in his head or out loud. — 00:03:21
    • On Ali's first surgical rotation a registrar said that surgery and medicine have a phrase, "categorise or die": nobody wants to hear you read off a list, they want to hear you categorise it. — 00:03:50
    • Asked for the causes of small bowel obstruction, Ali would now give the common ones, adhesions and hernias, then group the rest by the bowel being a hollow tube: blocked from the outside, by a problem in the wall, or by something in the lumen. — 00:04:19