iarwain1 comments on Stupid Questions May 2015 - Less Wrong
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Has anyone ever studied the educational model of studying just one subject at a time, and does it have a name? While in college the last semester, it occurred to me that, with so many subjects at once competing for my time and attention, I cannot dedicate myself to learning any given one in depth, and just achieve mediocre grades for all of them. The model I had in mind went like this:
1) Embark on one, and only one, subject for a few weeks or couple of months (example: high school trigonometry);
2) Study it full-time and exhaust the textbook;
3) Take an exam in it;
4) Have a short vacation (1-2 weeks);
5) Pass on to the next subject (example: early modern history).
There could be yearly review sessions a couple of weeks long, so that students have their memory refreshed on the subjects they have learned so far.
Leaving aside some issues relating to the practicality of scheduling classes like that, does this work better/worse than the model in which students' schedules are diversified? Would it just get monotonous after a while, and does this outweigh the benefits of being able to dedicate your focus to one single subject?
It has been studied and it's actually usually not recommended. This is the principle of interleaving. See Make It Stick, especially chapter 3. See also the recently linked document by richard_reitz.
Upvote for references, links, and avoiding weak anecdotal evidence.