Passing the Test: Improving Learning Gains by Balancing Spacing and Testing Effects

Where the spacing effect promotes longer intervals between facts that needs to be memorized, the testing effect argues for intervals that are short enough to recall the facts. As the ease by which facts are memorized differs greatly between stu-dents, an individual assessment of how well certain facts are represented in memory is required to successfully balance spacing and testing effects. We present a model that adapts itself to the abilities of the student, and show in a real-world experiment that this model outperforms other approaches to spacing