Monday, December 1, 2008

Ms Winnee's Quiz is Supported by Research

According to Butler and Roediger III (2007), short answer test of a lecture may help students to memorize what they have learned in class. The following paragraph is the abstract of their study:

The benefits of testing on long-term retention of lecture material were examined in a simulated classroom setting. Participants viewed a series of three lectures on consecutive days and engaged in a different type of postlecture activity on each day: studying a lecture summary, taking a multiple choice test, or taking a short answer test. Feedback (correct answers) was provided for half of the responses on the multiple choice and short answer tests. A final comprehensive short answer test was given 1 month later. Restudying or taking a multiple choice test soon after learning improved final recall relative to no activity, but taking an initial short answer test improved final recall the most. Feedback did not affect retention, probably due to the high level of performance on the initial tests. This finding is a powerful demonstration of how tests (especially recall tests) can improve retention of material after long retention intervals.

Their results showed that short answer test is the best way to improve student's memory performance, due to it's larger retrieval efforts. Well, this is also what Ms Winnee does in her classes, good for her! Despite the weaknesses of this research (for example, this research only had low sample size and practice effects might take place), I do think that pop quiz in class (yeah, i mean the spontaneous one, not that pre-announced quiz, this is lame lame lame) is good to students, at least you can see us studying deadly before every Ms Winnee's classes.

Reference:
Butler, A. & Roediger III, H. (2007). Testing improves long-term retention in a simulated classroom setting. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19, 514-527.

4 comments:

Mei San said...

this is awesome!!!!!

lezheng said...

haha Ms Winnee is always awesome, she applies the research findings in her career!

Mia Lim said...

haha....
Agree agree

but u also geng wo, can find this journal. ms. winnee probably read it before...

lezheng said...

This post becomes a little bit popular in facebook already, which is really out of my expectation.

Actually her quiz creates stress as well, as we all know stress may affect memory (I always experience it). I think this is the downside of her quiz.

If you pay attention to her teaching style, you may find that she's practicing the research findings, such as she stops talking while we're writing notes because she doesn't want to divide our attention. Good for her, good to us.