Test-Enhanced Learning: Using the Testing Effect in the Classroom

The process of remembering concepts or facts—retrieval from memory—increases long-term retention of those concepts or facts. This idea, also known as retrieval practice, test-enhanced learning, or the testing effect, has been demonstrated time and time again in laboratory and classroom studies as an effective learning tool over simply rereading notes. It is one of the most consistent findings in cognitive psychology (Roediger and Butler 2011; Roediger and Pyc 2012).

The use of the word “tests” stirs up emotional images of summative assessments that impact a grade. In fact, the “testing” that actually enhances learning is the low-stakes retrieval practice. Retrieval is any activity that enables a learner to generate information on one's own. For example, simply teaching others about a subject is generative.

Retrieval practice can be a powerful tool for instructors to use in the classroom, and for students to use on their own.

Take-away ideas

• Repeated retrieval enhances the long-term retention of even complex material
  
• Various test formats can enhance learning
  
• Feedback enhances learning through retrieval practice

Repeated retrieval enhances long-term retention of complex material

Partly due to early studies with simple language word acquisition, early criticism of learning through retrieval suggested that the practice only enabled rote memory. Further investigations have broadened this notion and educators should think of retrieval practice broadly and include complex material and skill building in testing practice. For example, biology students can learn the meaning of genetic terms through retrieval practice, but they can also learn to solve Hardy-Weinberg equation questions, as well.

Various test formats can enhance learning

Instructors often wonder about the effectiveness of various test-question formats. Evidence shows retrieval practice with multiple-choice and free-response questions improved students’ performance on a final, delayed test compared with a no-retrieval control. The effect was observed for both questions that required only recall and those that required inference. Hybrid questions (combined multiple choice and short answer/free recall questions) have a slight advantage when the final assessment is free recall.

Feedback enhances learning through retrieval practice

Classroom tips

• Interleave content, particularly lecture-heavy content with opportunities for students to generate that same information verbally to their neighbors.
• Setting aside the last few minutes of a class to ask students to recall, articulate, and organize their memory of the content of the day’s class may provide significant benefits to their later memory of these topics.
• Tell students that frequent quizzing helps to learn—and that effective quizzing can take a variety of forms. Helping them learn how to learn can give them a particularly helpful tool to add to their toolkit (Stanger-Hall et al., 2011). 
• Incorporating frequent low or no-stake quizzes in various formats to avoid stereotype threat.