Massed Practice Disadvantages

Distributed practice is a type of learning strategy that consists of brief, frequent practice sessions with rest intervals. In contrast, massed practice is a practice of a skill for an extended period of time continuously with little to no rest (Woolfolk, p 309). According to research distributed practice is more advantageous to learning over massed practice. This is because distributed practice strengthens neural connections improving long-term memory. Whereas, massed practice is like cramming all the information into one timeframe leading to fatigue and cognitive overload (Woolfolk, p.309).
Another reason of advantage to distributed practice is the context of information is variable because of the time between retrieval, which encodes different contextual information. In contrast, massed practice context is similar as the information is crammed in one consecutive session and has no variability. This is known as contextual variability when the information is encoded in memory because of the surrounding context (Francisco, 2015).
I try to stay away from massed practice because I never see much of a benefit in it. With a heavy load of classes, it can be difficult to routinely use distributed practice because you get overwhelmed with the amount of work required. However, it is my primary method of learning.
Advantages for using distributed practice is: it is good for gross motor skills, have multiple insistences to understand information, things forgotten from one session can be retrieved in another, and is less fatiguing (Woolfolk, p 309-310). Disadvantages could be that it may take longer to master a skill, may have to reintroduce idea’s after a break, can cause frustration and some break longer while working