However, even multiple choice tests like those used at Columbia Middle School can yield strong benefi ts. While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefi ts learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results. Retrieval practice has been studied extensively in recent years, and an analysis of these studies shows that even a single test in a class can produce a large improvement in fi nal exam scores, and gains in learning continue to increase as the number of tests increases.14
Whichever theories science eventually tells us are correct about how repeated retrieval strengthens memory, empirical research shows us that the testing effect is real— that the act of retrieving a memory changes the memory, making it easier to retrieve again later.
How widely is retrieval practice used as a study technique? In one survey, college students were largely unaware of its effectiveness. In another survey, only 11 percent of college students said they use this study strategy. Even when they did report testing themselves, they mostly said they did it to discover what they didn’t know, so they could study that material more.
That’s a perfectly valid use of testing, but few students realize that retrieval itself creates greater retention.15
Is repeated testing simply a way to expedite rote learning? In fact, research indicates that testing, compared to rereading, can facilitate better transfer of knowledge to new contexts and problems, and that it improves one’s ability to retain and
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retrieve material that is related but not tested. Further research is needed on this point, but it seems that retrieval practice can make information more accessible when it is needed in various contexts.
Do students resist testing as a tool for learning? Students do generally dislike the idea of tests, and it’s not hard to see why, in par tic u lar in the case of high- stakes tests like midterms and fi nals, where the score comes with signifi cant consequences.
Yet in all studies of testing that reported students’ attitudes, the students who were tested frequently rated their classes more favorably at the end of the semester than those tested less frequently. Those who were frequently tested reached the end of the semester on top of the material and did not need to cram for exams.
How does taking a test affect subsequent studying? After a test, students spend more time restudying the material they missed, and they learn more from it than do their peers who restudy the material without having been tested. Students whose study strategies emphasize rereading but not self- testing show over-confi dence in their mastery. Students who have been quizzed have a double advantage over those who have not: a more accurate sense of what they know and don’t know, and the strengthening of learning that accrues from retrieval practice.16
Are there any further, indirect benefi ts of regular, low- stakes classroom testing? Besides strengthening learning and retention, a regime of this kind of testing improves student attendance. It increases studying before class (because students
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know they’ll be quizzed), increases attentiveness during class if students are tested at the end of class, and enables students to better calibrate what they know and where they need to bone up. It’s an antidote to mistaking fl uency with the text, resulting from repeated readings, for mastery of the subject.
Frequent low-
stakes testing helps dial down test anxiety among students by diversifying the consequences over a much larger sample: no single test is a make- or- break event. And this kind of testing enables instructors to identify gaps in students’ understanding and adapt their instruction to fi ll them.
These benefi ts of low- stakes testing accrue whether instruction is delivered online or in the classroom.17
The Takeaway
Practice at retrieving new knowledge or skill from memory isa potent tool for learning and durable retention. This is true for anything the brain is asked to remember and call up again in the future— facts, complex concepts, problem- solving techniques, motor skills.
Effortful retrieval makes for stronger learning and retention. We’re easily seduced into believing that learning is better when it’s easier, but the research shows the opposite: when the mind has to work, learning sticks better. The greater the effort to retrieve learning, provided that you succeed, the more that learning is strengthened by retrieval. After an initial test, delaying subsequent retrieval practice is more potent for reinforcing retention than immediate practice, because delayed retrieval requires more effort.
Repeated retrieval not only makes memories more durable but produces knowledge that can be retrieved more readily, in more varied settings, and applied to a wider variety of problems.
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While cramming can produce better scores on an immediate exam, the advantage quickly fades because there is much greater forgetting after rereading than after retrieval practice.
The benefi ts of retrieval practice are long- term.
Simply including one test (retrieval practice) in a class yields a large improvement in fi nal exam scores, and gains continue to increase as the frequency of classroom testing increases.
Testing doesn’t need to be initiated by the instructor. Students can practice retrieval anywhere; no quizzes in the classroom are necessary. Think fl ashcards— the way second graders learn the multiplication tables can work just as well for learners at any age to quiz themselves on anatomy, mathematics, or law. Self- testing may be unappealing because it takes more effort than rereading, but as noted already, the greater the effort at retrieval, the more will be retained.
Students who take practice tests have a better grasp of their progress than those who simply reread the material. Similarly, such testing enables an instructor to spot gaps and miscon-ceptions and adapt instruction to correct them.
Giving students corrective feedback after tests keeps them from incorrectly retaining material they have misunderstood and produces better learning of the correct answers.
Students in classes that incorporate low-stakes quizzing
come to embrace the practice. Students who are tested frequently rate their classes more favorably.
What about Principal Roger Chamberlain’s initial concerns about practice quizzing at Columbia Middle School— that it might be nothing more than a glorifi ed path to rote learning?
When we asked him this question after the study was completed, he paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. “What
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I’ve really gained a comfort level with is this: for kids to be able to evaluate, synthesize, and apply a concept in different settings, they’re going to be much more effi cient at getting there when they have the base of knowledge and the retention, so they’re not wasting time trying to go back and fi gure out what that word might mean or what that concept was about. It allows them to go to a higher level.”
3
Mix Up Your Practice
It may not be intuitive that retrieval practice is a more powerful learning strategy than repeated review and rereading, yet most of us take for granted the importance of testing in sports. It’s what we call “practice-practice- practice.” Well, here’s a study that may surprise you.
A group of eight- year- olds practiced tossing beanbags into buckets in gym class. Half of the kids tossed into a bucket three feet away. The other half mixed it up by tossing into buckets two feet and four feet away. After twelve weeks of this they were all tested on tossing into a three- foot bucket. The kids who did the best by far were those who’d practiced on two-and four- foot buckets but never on three- foot buckets. 1
Why is this? We will come back to the beanbags, but fi rst a little insight into a widely held myth about how we learn.
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