e-assessment (f)or learning

I’m just catching up on my reading of New Scientist and in last week’s (13th July) issue I have found this from a ‘one minute’ interview with Anant Agarwal, president of the edX MOOC provider.

Question: What was the first course you offered – and what insights did it give you?

Answer: It was on circuits and electronics. In the first two weeks, about 70% of the students accessed the course video first, then did their homework. By midway through, 60% of students did their homework first, then watched the video. We learned that it’s more motivational to be given something to solve and then go get the knowledge, as needed.

I’m not sure about the detail of this one, but as a physicist I couldn’t resist the analogy between quantum mechanics and the testing effect!

‘The testing effect represents a conundrum, a small version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in psychology: Just as measuring the position of an electron changes that position, so the act of retrieving information from memory changes the mnemonic represention underlying retrieval – and enhances later retention of the tested information.’
Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 181-210. pg 182.

This will be my final post that picks up a theme from CAA 2011 , but the potential implications of this one are massive. For the past few weeks I have been trying to get my head around the significance of the ideas I was introduced to by John Kleeman’s presentation ‘Recent cognitive psychology research shows strongly that quizzes help retain learning’. I’m ashamed to admit that the ideas John was presenting were mostly new to me. The ideas echo with a lot of what we do at the UK Open University in encouraging students to learn actively, but they go further. Thank you John! (more…)