Cramming (education)

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In education, cramming is the practice of working intensively to absorb large volumes of information in short amounts of time. It is also known as massed learning.^[1] It is often done by students in preparation for upcoming exams, especially just before them. Usually the student's priority is to obtain shallow recall suited to a superficial examination protocol, rather than to internalize the deep structure of the subject matter. Cramming is often discouraged by educators because the hurried coverage of material tends to result in poor long-term retention of material, a phenomenon often referred to as the spacing effect. Despite this, educators nevertheless widely persist in the use of superficial examination protocols, because these questions are easier to compose, quicker (and therefore cheaper for the institution) to grade, and objective on their own terms. When cramming, one attempts to focus only on studies and to forgo unnecessary actions or habits.

In contrast with cramming, active learning and critical thinking are two methods which emphasize the retention of material through the use of class discussions, study groups and individual thinking. Each has been cited as a more effective means of learning and retaining information as compared to cramming and memorization.