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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 11:43

SpacedEd is a platform designed to allow learners and teachers to harness the educational benefits of spaced education.

Spaced education is a novel method of online education developed and rigorously investigated by Dr. B. Price Kerfoot (Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School).

It is based upon two core psychology research findings:the spacing effect and the testing effect.

In more than 10 randomized trials completed to date, spaced education has been found to:

  1. Improve knowledge acquisition
  2. Increase long-term knowledge retention (out to 2 years)
  3. Change behavior
  4. Boost learners' abilities to accurately self-assess their knowledge.
  5. In addition, spaced education is extremely well-accepted by learners.
  6. The spacing effect refers to the psychology research finding that information which is presented and repeated over spaced intervals is learned and retained more effectively, in comparison to traditional bolus ('binge-and-purge') methods of education.
  7. The testing effect refers to the research finding that the long-term retention of information is significantly improved by testing learners on this information.
  8. Testing is not merely a means to measure a learner's level of knowledge, but rather causes knowledge to be stored more effectively in long-term memory.
  9. The spaced education methodology is content-neutral and thus can be utilized to learn most anything.
  10. Potential applications range from teaching chemistry concepts to high school students to reinforcing Arabic language skills among health workers in the Middle East.
  11. It can also be used to reinforce educational material which was initially presented in the classroom.
  12. The full multi-media capabilities of the Internet can be harnessed to create a rich and effective learning experience.
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