2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

From athletics, school clubs, coursework, and jobs to hanging out with friends, endless scrolling, or binge watching, students have constant competition for their time. Each student must prioritize their tasks. How much time should be devoted to reading a course textbook or reviewing class notes? When is the best time to complete homework sets or study for an assessment? Literature shows that students learn best when they space their practice or study over time [1]. However, students are not always disciplined to follow this advice and often leave their work to the last minute, cramming in study in less beneficial ways. Are there ways to redesign courses to encourage spaced practice? To examine this question, engineering professors from two different institutions, The United States Military Academy (USMA) and Calvin University (Calvin), applied different approaches to homework and frequent quizzes to encourage spaced practice for improved retention. The course at USMA was an introductory construction management course taught in the Department of Civil & Mechanical Engineering. The course at Calvin was an upper-level hydraulic engineering course required for all students graduating with a concentration in civil and environmental engineering or energy, environmental, and sustainability engineering.