SPACED REPETITION: A METHOD FOR LEARNING MORE LAW IN LESS TIME.

• Author: Teninbaum, Gabriel H.

"For our whole education depends upon memory, and we shall receive instruction all in vain if all we hear slips from us." (1) -Quintilian I. Introduction

Imagine that you are a law student researching ways to maximize your chances of passing the bar exam. Now imagine that, in your research, you discover a method that has been proven to allow users to remember nearly four times more than other methods, (2) as well as to dramatically improve performance on tests. (3) You find that it has been thoroughly studied and shown effective, time-and-again, for more than 100 years. (4) You also learn that this method has been called the single best way to study by the Association for Psychological Science, (5) "the new way doctors learn" by Time Magazine, (6) and been recommended in the New York Times, (7) Wall Street Journal (8) and Harvard Business Review. (9) You find that celebrity proponents of the method include everyone from a Wikipedia founder (10) to the all-time record holder for single-day winnings on Jeopardy! (11) In one recent use case of this method in legal education, an entire graduating law school class was given the option to use this technology. (12) Students who chose to do so passed the bar exam at a rate 19.2% higher than classmates who did not. (13) You learn that this result is consistent with the decades of research on the effectiveness of this method, including a finding that medical students preparing for their boards remembered nearly three times as much when using this technique. (14)

So, if you were this hypothetical law student preparing for the bar (or, for that matter, a law professor or law school dean interested in helping your students), would you be interested in learning more? If so, read on.

What you have discovered is "spaced repetition" ("SR"). (15) This learning and memorization method has the potential to improve the way law students learn and prepare for exams, and this paper explores it. Discovered in the 1800s, SR has only now become feasible outside of the lab because modern technology, particularly smart phones and the internet, make it apply and modify a special algorithm that works to best help each individual user. (16)

SR is an alternative to traditional "cramming" and has been proven to help users retain knowledge for the long-term with less study time and greater retention rates. (17) Its effectiveness is based on a combination of scientific factors, but it's simple to apply: users look at electronic flashcards on their smart phone or computer, rate how well they knew the answer, then review the card again when prompted based on an algorithm working behind the scenes. (18) When matched with excellent content on the cards, SR users become much more efficient and effective learners and test-takers. (19)

To grasp the potential for SR, consider the bar exam: to prepare, students typically complete three years of full-time courses, then, after graduating, take an expensive commercial bar preparation course, during which they spend three months studying full-time. (20) Still, for many, the difference between failure and success on the bar exam can be a razor's edge. (21)

What if, for every student on that edge of failing, we could give them eight more points on the bar, and save them some time in the offing? (22) That is exactly what SR appears capable of doing. (23) A study summarizing the results of over fifty 20th century studies testing SR showed that users of this method improved testing results by at least half a standard deviation. (24) Translating that advantage to the multi-state portion of the bar exam (to say nothing of any advantage it might provide on essay portions), a half a standard deviation improvement would bring a bar examinee earning eight extra points on the MBE alone. (25) The effect: many who would fail the bar would now pass. (26)

In the following pages, this article explains in greater detail how SR works, (27) and summarizes the research behind it. (28) The article will then explain the role SR can play in legal education, together with a plan to implement it. (29) This article also describes the platform that I have built with the hopes of ultimately providing a tool to help all legal professionals improve their learning. (30)

2. What Spaced Repetition Is and How it Works

   SR works because it allows for harnessing of three psychological phenomena that aid learning and memory: (1) the forgetting curve dictates that we can predict when a person will forget information; (2) the spacing effect shows that studying just before we would predict forgetting causes exponential benefits in remembering; and (3) the testing effect stands for the principle that testing oneself along the way reinforces these benefits. (31) Below, this section provides a more detailed summary of how each of these phenomena work.

   1. The Forgetting Curve

      Memories decay with time. (32) This is an almost universal experience and scholars of memory describe the predictable decline in the probability of recall as the "forgetting curve." (33) Recognition, and identification, of the forgetting curve is vital to SR because SR cues users to restudy immediately before information users have learned is predicted to be forgotten based on that individual's forgetting curve. (34) The value of doing this is based on the empirically-documented insight that there is an ideal moment at which to reinforce a piece of information to help one retain it: wait too long, information is not recalled at all; study too soon and time is wasted time because it is recalled too readily. (35)

      The forgetting curve was discovered by a German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, in 1885. (36) To demonstrate it, Ebbinghaus had subjects memorize a series of nonsensical syllables and tested recall of them at various periods of time, from twenty minutes to one month, after they initially learned them. (37) By repeatedly testing subjects' ability to remember the syllables after various delays from first learning them, he was able to describe the shape of the forgetting curve and demonstrate the exponential rate at which learned information decays from memory. (38)

      In his classic experiment, Ebbinghaus found that, beginning the moment after a person learns information, their ability to recall it decays. (39) For nonsense syllables, only twenty minutes later, the average user has a less-than-60% likelihood of recalling a given syllable. (40) An hour after learning it, it's less than 50%. (41) A day later, they have lost nearly 70% of the information. (42) At a month, the learner retains just 20% of the material they had learned. (43) Ebbinghaus found that the forgetting curve is, essentially, universal for given subject matter, and the rate of memory decay differs little between individuals. (44)

      Ebbinghaus also showed that the curve demonstrates "exponential decay," meaning that a large fraction of material learned is lost quickly. (45) However, even though the initial decline is steep, the rate of decay declines with time. (46) In the context of memory, this means that the longer a memory has been retained, the less likely it is to be lost for any future increment of additional time: material that "survives" becomes progressively less likely to be forgotten in each additional increment of time. (47) It also follows that if one wishes to remember information for the long term, the longer they are able to retain it in the initial stages of study the slower the information will decay. (48)

      For users of SR, this means that a few early review keeps many memories "alive" while still efficiently identifying those items that have inevitably been forgotten for restudy. (49) Success at early tests allows the interval to the next scheduled rehearsal to be expanded until they get onto the flatter bit of the curve. (50) The result is that the longer a memory has been retained, the less likely it is to be lost for any future increment of additional time. (51)

   2. The Spacing Effect

      The spacing effect is a corollary to the forgetting curve. (52) This principle holds that properly spacing repetitions of studying slows the rate of memory decay, effectively adjusting the slope of the forgetting curve, thereby allowing longer periods to occur between review sessions. (53) The spacing effect increases over time, so that by the fourth and fifth reviews of a given piece of information, the increasing intervals between review sessions become pronounced, with the user no longer having to review after a few hours to not suffer a significant loss of information, but instead, only has to review again after several days or weeks. (54)

      Source: Gary Wolf, Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm, WIRED (Apr. 21, 2008), archived at https://perma.cc/BN4P-JR8W.

      This matters because it means that, by weathering the initial storm of studying on a SR algorithm a few times over a few days, users get the dividend of remembering information at a very high rate with little maintenance. (55) One could imagine that in law school, users would study a few times early in a semester, then have information essentially "banked" for the exam at semester's end as a result of this phenomenon. (56) For that matter (and as detailed below in part V on using SR in legal education), a 1L could learn important information for their exams in Contracts or Civil Procedure, and, with very little maintenance after the first year, still remember nearly all of it for the bar exam more than 2 years later. (57)

   3. The Testing Effect

      Finally, when people study using SR, they also benefit from the "testing effect," which holds that people achieve recall of learned information more readily when they have tested themselves on it, as opposed to just passively observing it. (58) While testing without feedback improves learning and recall, (59) the effect is stronger when testing is associated with meaningful feedback by exposure to the correct...