Start with something you can begin to explain
Revision works best on material you have already met. Pick one small goal from your specification: explain a process, tell two similar ideas apart or use a method. If the topic is brand new, learn it first from your teacher, textbook or a worked example.
Then close the explanation and see how much you can rebuild on your own. The gap between what you have read and what you can reproduce is what the rest of this routine is for. Stretch or shorten each step to suit your subject, your confidence and the time you have.
Attempt: try before you look
Retrieval practice means pulling information out of your memory instead of rereading it. Explaining a process out loud, writing a definition from scratch and attempting an exam question with your notes closed all count.
In Roediger and Karpicke’s 2006 experiments, students studied short prose passages. On a test five minutes later, rereading came out ahead. On tests two days and a week later, students who had practised recalling the passage remembered substantially more, even though the rereaders felt more confident. Revision that feels smooth is not always the revision that lasts.
On ALN, that means choosing a question and attempting it before you open the mark scheme. If you cannot get started, note exactly what you are missing, look it up, then close it and try again.
Check: find the exact gap
Next, compare your answer with the mark scheme. Look for what is missing, what is wrong and what you wrote without being able to justify it. Check correct answers too: make sure you got there by reasoning rather than a lucky guess.
Butler and Roediger (2008) found that feedback after a multiple-choice test helped students recall more correct answers later and made them less likely to repeat the wrong options they had been shown. That study used multiple-choice questions. Marking your own written answer is harder, so read the marking criteria properly rather than skimming for keywords.
ALN gives you the mark scheme and, where one is available, a model answer to check against. You make the marking decision yourself, so if you cannot tell whether something would earn credit, ask your teacher.
Correct: turn the mistake into a next step
Write down what went wrong and what you will do differently, as specifically as you can. For example: “I confused mass with weight. Next time I will write down the quantity and its unit before substituting.” A note like “be more careful” gives you nothing to act on.
Then redo the step with the answer hidden. If you were missing knowledge, go back to the explanation. If you misread the question, work out what the command word was asking for. Later, try a different question that tests the same idea.
Mark the question correct or incorrect in ALN so you can find it again. ALN saves the result, not your working, so keep the detailed correction in your own notes.
Return: come back after a gap
Spacing means spreading your practice on a topic across several sessions instead of cramming it into one. Cepeda and colleagues’ 2006 review pulled together 317 experiments on verbal recall. It found that the gap giving the best retention grew with how long the material had to be remembered. There is no single perfect interval for every learner and every exam date.
A reasonable starting point is to come back to a topic a few days later, then again the following week. If you struggle to recall the basics, return sooner. If it comes easily, try a harder or less familiar question next time.
Use Attempts or the Dashboard to find what you did before, and put the return date in your own calendar. ALN does not schedule reviews for you.
Mix: practise choosing the method
Interleaving means mixing different types of problem instead of finishing all of one type before moving on. Once you can use two methods, a mixed set makes you decide which one each question needs, which is exactly what an exam asks you to do.
The evidence here is more mixed than for retrieval or spacing. Brunmair and Richter’s 2019 meta-analysis found a moderate benefit overall, strongest for visual material such as paintings and smaller for maths tasks. Results for explanatory texts were unclear, and for learning words, practising one type at a time actually did better.
So build the basics with a focused set first. Then use ALN’s topic filters to gather related questions that need different approaches, and check the mix yourself before you start.
Putting it together: a 30-minute session
Here is one way to fit the routine into half an hour. The timings are only a starting point. Allow more time for long questions, new material or a teacher’s assignment.
- 3 minutes: set a goal and choose a few questions, including one you got wrong last time.
- 12 minutes: attempt them with the answers closed, showing your working.
- 10 minutes: check against the mark scheme, sort out anything you were unsure about and rewrite the weak parts.
- 5 minutes: save your results, write one specific error note and decide when you will come back to the topic.
For teachers: build correction into the assignment
Teams lets you assign a chosen set of questions. Make correction part of the task: ask learners to bring back their attempt, one correction and one question they still have. In later assignments, include a little earlier material alongside the current topic.
Treat recorded progress as the start of a conversation, not a verdict. A learner who marks several answers incorrect may be marking honestly and finding genuine gaps. A row of ticks on its own does not show independent understanding, so look at the actual work where it matters.
Which parts ALN helps with
ALN covers the practice and checking steps: questions, mark schemes, model answers where available, saved results, the Dashboard and Team assignments.
The rest is up to you: deciding when to revisit a topic, keeping detailed error notes and knowing when you need a teacher’s feedback. Availability varies by course, so check the coverage and Plans pages before you plan a session around them.
What the research does and does not show
These studies looked at particular learners, tasks and test conditions: recalling prose, answering multiple-choice questions and learning to sort examples into categories. Writing an extended exam answer is a different task, and results may not carry over neatly.
The routine above is our reading of that research. None of these studies tested this routine or AceLearningNow, and we do not claim that using ALN will raise your grades.
If the same mistake keeps coming back, stop and fix the understanding first by rereading the explanation or asking for help. More questions will not fix a misunderstanding on their own.
Evidence and sources
- Roediger & Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17, 249–255.
- Cepeda et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 354–380.
- Butler & Roediger (2008). Feedback enhances the positive effects and reduces the negative effects of multiple-choice testing. Memory & Cognition, 36, 604–616.
- Brunmair & Richter (2019). Similarity matters: A meta-analysis of interleaved learning and its moderators. Psychological Bulletin, 145, 1029–1052.