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When I shared my first quiz last week (Geography Quiz #1), I mentioned quizzes are a brilliant way to implement retrieval practice. Today, I’d like to go into a little more detail about what this means.
Quizzing ourselves to check information is known is a really effective learning technique. It is a form of retrieval practice and constitutes a desirable difficulty as proposed by Robert Bjork.
Desirable difficulties are tasks requiring a considerable (but desirable) amount of effort that lead to improvements in long-term performance, such as trying to recall information without having it in front of you. When information comes to mind easily and feels fluent, it is easy to fool ourselves that we know the material. This can happen when a teacher asks questions during/at the end of a lesson, when re-reading notes, or if reviewing recently-studied material. It is easy to fall under an illusion that something is known, strike it off the study list and, in so doing, deny ourselves the opportunity to commit it to long-term memory.
To avoid this, retrieval practice is essential. Retrieval practice, where we question ourselves, enables us to identify gaps in our learning, thus supporting metacognition (knowledge of our thought processes). As we try to recall information or answer questions, meta-cognition enables us to recognise what we don’t yet know and supports us in planning and implementing how to fill those knowledge gaps.
We often think of retrieval practice as an assessment strategy (answering questions/taking tests etc.), but we really need to change our mindset and categorise it as a learning strategy and a powerful memory enhancer. Indeed, scientists sometimes refer to the learning that results as the “testing effect.” The act of pulling information “out” of our minds dramatically improves learning. When we retrieve the information from memory, its representation in memory is changed such that it becomes easier to recall in the future.
Instead of reading notes over and over again, it is important to check how much information you can recall. It is beneficial if this is done from the outset during study sessions, i.e., rather than reading material and then asking yourself questions on it, it is beneficial to ask questions first.
Students tend to believe re-reading material repeatedly constitutes an effective study technique. Researchers speculate this may be because, with the material in front of them, students experience ‘illusions of competence’ and this influences their choice of study methods. Self-testing (retrieval practice) tends not to be used by students during study sessions. As such, it is important we support students in developing the habit of conducting retrieval practice.
Implementing Retrieval Practice
There are a few different ways to implement retrieval practice, i.e., getting information out. Here are some guidance notes I have previously provided to students:
Close your books, and write down or draw everything you know about a topic. How much can you remember? This is sometimes called a ‘brain dump’ or ‘show what you know.’
Try the Leitner System. Put keywords or images on flashcards, with a corresponding definition or explanation on the back, and test yourself on these each time you revise. Ensure that you go through the explanation in full before turning over the card so that you don’t trick your brain into getting confused between recognition and recall.
Answer test questions on the topic. Make a list of questions, and try to answer them each time you review the topic. Be creative in how you do this. Answer questions from exam papers, and end-of-chapter questions; create lists of questions or web-based quizzes; try answering multiple-choice questions and completing cloze tests. Can you exchange some assessment quizzes with a friend?
Use self-explanation as you are answering questions/solving problems. Talk aloud about the process you are going through to find a solution. Ask yourself what variables are known and unknown, consider how to obtain the unknown information, and what you then need to do with it, and comment on any errors in your thinking.
Create concept maps. Jot down the key words related to a topic and draw links between them. Add other words and phrases showing how the words and ideas link together.
Monitor the questions you make mistakes on. Are you repeatedly making mistakes on a particular one/type? This may indicate this material has not been fully understood. There is no point trying to memorise information you do not understand. In this situation, ask a teacher to review the information with you again or discuss the difficulty with a peer. Comprehension is necessary in order to draw connections with known information and so further develop the schema in your brain.
Use the feedback from your retrieval practice to plan your timetable. Gradually increase the study interval for known material (a technique known as spaced practice); review unknown material the following day.
Multiple-Choice Questions
In terms of multiple-choice questions – the format adopted in our Geography Quiz #1 – it is thought there may be a dual-fold benefit to this type of testing.
When students do not know the answer to a multiple-choice questions, it is argued they typically try to use a process of elimination, by retrieving information pertaining to why the other answers are incorrect, to reject various options and enable them to uncover the correct answer. In this way, multiple-choice questions serve to support learning for both the tested and untested information.
There is great benefit to beginning a new topic with a multiple-choice quiz to activate prior knowledge as this format alerts students to attend to information pertaining to the question, as well as to information pertaining to the alternatives, when the topic is being subsequently studied.
Caution!
A word of caution regarding retrieval practice:
Once students have successfully retrieved an item (especially if they do so with ease), they tend to be very confident in their learning and believe they will be able to recall it again relatively easily in the future. As a result, they often drop such items from their study schedule. Recall for items not repeatedly practised drops to have 35% (about half the success rate for items that have been repeatedly reviewed). Because students, for various reasons outlined, tend not to believe the science of learning (or may feel it does not apply to them), engineering opportunities for periodic spaced retrieval of taught topics is important.
Some Final Notes
Counter-intuitive though it may seem, using retrieval practice before you study something new is very effective. If you know the topic you will be moving onto next, try jotting down anything you already know about it in order to activate your prior knowledge and potentially provide hooks for new learning.
It is important to conduct retrieval sessions at longer-term intervals so go back over topics and lessons from last term and last year.
The format of the questions you answer during retrieval practice does not need to match those you may have to answer on a later test.
If you haven’t done so, why not take our Geography Quiz #1. Use it to activate prior knowledge or to test yourself on the topics I blogged about here and here. Take the quiz before clicking the links!
