Repeated Recall: Implementing the Testing Effect as a Pedagogical Method
Thank you to John Geppert for this week’s guest post
Most of us view testing as a way to evaluate what our students have learned with respect to a particular topic or set of skills. While testing certainly performs this role, many studies have found that the act of testing (via any method of recall) improves long-term retention of the material more than additional study. This testing-retention phenomenon has been coined the “testing effect.”
Requiring students to recall information at spaced, rather than massed intervals, results in the best long term retention. In addition, recall is improved over additional study even for alternative future testing methods and, surprisingly, for transfer of recalled knowledge to novel, as not yet seen problems.
I use the quizzing feature in Canvas to exploit the testing effect in FINA 361. FINA 361 is the required introductory finance course that all College of Business majors are required to take. Students usually take FINA 361 as juniors. Enrollments for the large section are approximately 350–400 students. The course meets in person Tuesday/Thursday for an hour and 15 minutes. All the graded assessment is online, either at home or using the Testing Center.
Each week is conducted in approximately the following sequence:
- Monday: Watch an online narrated PPT lecture introducing a topic (1 hour max.); take short quiz on previous Thursday’s material (5 to 10 questions)
- Tuesday: Work problems related to Monday’s material in class and clarify the material
- Wednesday: Watch online narrated PPT lecture introducing a topic (1 hour max.); Take short quiz on Tuesday’s material (5 to 10 questions)
- Thursday: Work problems related to Wednesday’s material in class and clarify the material
- Friday to Sunday: Take short quiz on the previous week’s material (5 to 10 questions)
I inform the students of the type of material that will be on the quiz. Monday’s quiz will periodically contain material up to that point in the semester for further review.
Some students find having three quizzes a week “excessive,” but eventually realize that all the practice results in being prepared for exams and not having to cram. I do inform them about the testing effect research and some have commented on my evaluations that they appreciate the approach. From one student:
“Before the semester started, I was most concerned with my ability to understand the subject of finance and my performance in your class. The continuous practice and review opportunities however have led me to consider your class one of my favorites … I have learned from very few professors who understand learning theory and structure the class the way you do.”
Perhaps an outlier, but encouraging to hear nonetheless.
Since implementing the three quiz a week protocol, the grades have shifted upward with a mass toward the B letter grade. Obviously this is not a formal study, but the frequent recall required from the students seems to lead to semester long retention. The final grade distributions from two sections are shown below.
Class of 80 Students
Class of 350+ Students
Exploiting the testing effect is very easy to implement in Canvas. If you would like me to share anything else about this with you, feel free to contact me.
I provided the abstracts from a brief sample of the literature on the testing effect.
