Why tests and quizzes

A study found that students who had brief retrieval tests before a high-stakes test remembered 60 percent of material, while those who only studied remembered 40 percent.

Additionally, in a study , eighth graders who took a practice test halfway through the year remembered 10 percent more facts on a U. Short, low-stakes tests also help teachers gauge how well students understand the material and what they need to reteach.

Summative tests, such as a final exam that measures how much was learned but offers no opportunities for a student to improve, have been found to be less effective. Teachers should tread carefully with test design, however, as not all tests help students retain information. Though multiple choice tests are relatively easy to create, they can contain misleading answer choices—that are either ambiguous or vague—or offer the infamous all-, some-, or none-of-the-above choices, which tend to encourage guessing.

While educators often rely on open-ended questions, such short-answer questions, because they seem to offer a genuine window into student thinking, research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.

Research in cognitive science and psychology shows that testing, done right, can be an exceptionally effective way to learn. Taking tests, as well as engaging in well-designed activities before and after tests, can produce better recall of facts—and deeper and more complex understanding—than an education without exams. What Bain is doing in her classroom is called retrieval practice.

The practice has a well-established base of empirical support in the academic literature, going back almost years—but Bain, unaware of this research, worked out something very similar on her own over the course of a year career in the classroom. Then, eight years ago, she met Mark McDaniel through a mutual acquaintance. McDaniel is a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, a half an hour's drive from Bain's school. McDaniel had started to describe to Bain his research on retrieval practice when she broke in with an exclamation.

It works! He went on to explain to Bain that what he and his colleagues refer to as retrieval practice is, essentially, testing. Retrieval practice does not use testing as a tool of assessment. Rather it treats tests as occasions for learning, which makes sense only once we recognize that we have misunderstood the nature of testing.

We think of tests as a kind of dipstick that we insert into a student's head, an indicator that tells us how high the level of knowledge has risen in there—when in fact, every time a student calls up knowledge from memory, that memory changes. Its mental representation becomes stronger, more stable and more accessible.

Why would this be? It makes sense considering that we could not possibly remember everything we encounter, says Jeffrey Karpicke, a professor of cognitive psychology at Purdue University.

Given that our memory is necessarily selective, the usefulness of a fact or idea—as demonstrated by how often we have had reason to recall it—makes a sound basis for selection. Studies employing functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain are beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms behind the testing effect. In the handful of studies that have been conducted so far, scientists have found that calling up information from memory, as compared with simply restudying it, produces higher levels of activity in particular areas of the brain.

These brain regions are associated with the so-called consolidation, or stabilization, of memories and with the generation of cues that make memories readily accessible later on. Across several studies, researchers have demonstrated that the more active these regions are during an initial learning session, the more successful is study participants' recall weeks or months later.

According to Karpicke, retrieving is the principal way learning happens. Researchers theorize that while sifting through our mind for the particular piece of information we are trying to recollect, we call up associated memories and in so doing strengthen them as well. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that retrieval practice is better at improving retention than just about any other method learners could use.

To cite one example: in a study published in by Karpicke and his mentor, Henry Roediger III of Washington University, the authors reported that students who quizzed themselves on vocabulary terms remembered 80 percent of the words later on, whereas students who studied the words by repeatedly reading them over remembered only about a third of the words.

Retrieval practice is especially powerful compared with students' most favored study strategies: highlighting and rereading their notes and textbooks, practices that a recent review found to be among the least effective. And testing does not merely enhance the recall of isolated facts. The process of pulling up information from memory also fosters what researchers call deep learning. Students engaging in deep learning are able to draw inferences from, and make connections among, the facts they know and are able to apply their knowledge in varied contexts a process learning scientists refer to as transfer.

In an article published in in the journal Science , Karpicke and his Purdue colleague Janell Blunt explicitly compared retrieval practice with a study technique known as concept mapping. An activity favored by many teachers as a way to promote deep learning, concept mapping asks students to draw a diagram that depicts the body of knowledge they are learning, with the relations among concepts represented by links among nodes, like roads linking cities on a map.

In their study, Karpicke and Blunt directed groups of undergraduate volunteers— in all—to read a passage taken from a science textbook.

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How do I add a new question with the assessment builder? How do I add assessment questions using markup text or cut and paste? Turns out they actually made you learn better.

The reason, according to the researchers: People devise clues and devices to help themselves retain and remember information. Quizzes allow them to see which of their tricks works and which don't, allowing them a chance to revise the ineffective ones and recall more material. Trending Topics. Start your day with something GOOD.