Rethinking the exam structure in US schools to better accommodate and motivate spaced learning would be a significant step toward improving education quality.

Rethinking the exam structure in US schools to better accommodate and motivate spaced learning would be a significant step toward improving education quality. 'cperciva noted this effect from his time at Oxford... "When I tell North Americans about my time at Oxford University, one aspect of its undergraduate program inevitably surprises them: Final examinations. Rather than writing examinations at the end of each term, students in most subjects write a single set of examinations at the end of their final year, on which their entire degree performance is measured. (In recent years, some subjects have switched to annual examinations.) As terrifying as this might sound, the system has some merits: Whereas many students at institutions with termly examinations study the day before an exam and forget the material the day after the exam, attempting to 'cram' three years worth of material at once is largely an exercise in futility; as such, Oxford's examinations often provide a better measure of how much material a student has learned and retained. Given some of the conversations I've had with — and code I've seen from — people who have received computer science degrees from major universities and are actively working as software developers, I think that last part is very important: There's a lot of people out there who have forgotten some very basic — and very important — material" (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-10-08-software-development-final-exam.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-10-08-software-developm...). You can obviously practice spaced repetition regardless of your school's exam structure, and Cal Newport specifies a method for doing this in "The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work" (http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/10/03/the-art-of-stealth-studying-how-to-earn-a-40-with-only-10-hours-of-work/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/10/03/the-art-of-stealth-stu...). However, most students are unaware of this method nor have the disciple to follow it on their own so to realize its benefits on a mass scale, we would need to revamp the education system around these principles. And as 'qwern noted, sleep is a key factor in spaced repetition learning. Research shows sleep is when the brain prunes itself by separating signal from noise... "Sleep researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health believe it is more evidence for their theory of 'synaptic homeostasis.' This is the idea that synapses grow stronger when we're awake as we learn and adapt to an ever-changing the environment, that sleep refreshes the brain by bringing synapses back to a lower level of strength. This is important because larger synapses consume a lot of energy, occupy more space and require more supplies, including the proteins examined in this study." "Sleep — by allowing synaptic downscaling — saves energy, space and material, and clears away unnecessary 'noise' from the previous day, the researchers believe. The fresh brain is then ready to learn again in the morning" (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402143455.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402143455.ht...).