Spacing works!

A few months ago I had been to the doctors for a health condition that required me taking antibiotics for 5 days. Don't know what struck me then, but I had this feeling that the medicines prescribed were for a 3 day period. So instead of having the medicines spaced out over 5 days, I ended up taking the medicines 3 times a day and finished the course in 3 days. 

I reported to the doctor on Day 4 with a complaint that I had lost sleep completely. For a person like me, sleep had never been a problem. I could literally sleep anywhere - there is enough proof on different parts of my head from the handlebars of buses I have slept in. =)

The doctor was surprised that I finished the medicine in 3 days and he told me not to have any other medicine but water for the next few days. He said that because of the 'overdose' the body had turned hyperactive thus prohibiting sleep and causing restlessness.

Though through the hard way, I understand now that there is considerable purpose in 'Spacing'. There seemed to be some kind of 'adaptation time' or 'rest' that the body needs before responding to medicines. And overdose is never the solution.

There is some interesting research on the importance of 'Spacing' in Learning that I have come across. Douglas Fields from the National Institute of Child Health & Development in the US conducted a study on how the brain creates 'memory' - one of the most essential cognitive skills in learning.

'Fields’ research team showed that to form a pathway which would be fixed and therefore remembered, cells had to be repeatedly stimulated and then not stimulated, in a particular pattern.  The length of stimulation was not vital, but the gap between stimulations was.  Fields’ team demonstrated that when three stimulations were separated by two 10 minute gaps, the cells ‘switched on’ and a pathway – a long term memory- was formed. The key lay in moving away from big blocks of time teaching to ‘spaced learning’, where there was a natural pattern of breaks. He had essentially discovered the basis of much learning. '

                      - Do read the full article at - Spaced Learning 

The challenge for the learning professional is to create effective and long lasting learning experiences that continue to linger beyond our 8/16 hour sessions. Frankly, if we are concerned about effectiveness, then post-training, we should have left something that brings the learning back to life. I feel to a basic minimum, we should sell programs which go packaged with a post training support designed with learning immersion exercises in 2/4/8/12 week durations to create a more effective retention mechanism and help relive our sessions. Spaced learning works. Our clients would largely benefit from using Spacing in our learning design.