One can imagine designing a course or book which only allows access to lessons once students have practiced material from a previous lesson and incorporated it into their long-term memories (e.g. Execute Program’s lessons don’t unlock until you’ve successfully reviewed their prerequisites). But it seems that in many cases, the optimal initial review interval is very long—many weeks or perhaps even months (Quantum Country users seem to forget most prompts quite slowly). If you schedule reviews efficiently (i.e. by delaying them for very long periods), you’d make people wait a very long time before reading the next section, which readers may find to be quite an imposition.
Related: The mnemonic medium can be adapted to author an experience which unfolds over time
Q. Why might optimal scheduling of review sessions cause trouble for gated course sequences?
A. In many cases, the optimal initial ISI may be many weeks or more; readers probably don’t want to be gated that long.