SPS Seminar - Spaced Testing: Towards More Effective Learning

Spaced Testing: Towards More Effective Learning

When:  Thursday 18 May at 14.00

Where:  Microsoft Teams – Robert Hooke/Online

Speaker:  Prof Alice Voice – University of Leeds

Hosted by: Sally Jordan

Abstract:

Students have a habit of cramming for exams, and if they pass the exam with good enough marks, they will claim that this method of learning is successful. But it only affords them short term memory, and they will have forgotten much after a week or so. This method is thus not conducive to understanding the complexities of STEM material, where a good grasp of the fundamentals is needed to see the patterns and links between concepts, topics and modules.

Most people acknowledge that ‘practice makes perfect’ but how much do we, or our students, employ this within teaching/study of STEM? Probably we use some kind of coursework to give students practice, but most likely this is ‘massed practice’ (all at once after teaching each topic). However, research by Ebbinghaus has shown the need for regular repetition to store information in our long-term memory.

This talk explores these ideas through the concept of Spaced Testing used within a compulsory 1^st year physics module. A web-app was used to allow students to space their self-testing of the fundamental knowledge and ideas of the module, and analysis was undertaken to evaluate the impact of this on exam performance and retention of knowledge beyond the summer vacation.