Investigating “Prior episodic learning and the efficacy of retrieval practice,” Gupta et al. (2021) draw two important conclusions for teachers. The first we have known about for a long time, the second, is an important ‘knowledge nugget’ that can be easily adopted in classrooms.
- Results support the advantage of testing over restudy.
- The testing advantage is independent of the degree of prior episodic learning (prior learning)
The research
In this study, Gupta et al (2021) manipulated the number of study-phase item repetitions. Participants were randomly assigned to either the 1x or 4x study groups. 80 English word-pairs were studied for 6 s per trial, either once or four times.
Following training phase, half of the words were assigned to the restudy condition and half to the cued-recall testing with feedback condition (henceforth, test condition).
In the final test phase, all words were tested through cued-recall with no feedback.
What does that mean exactly?
- Yet more evidence for the advantage of test-enhanced learning. That is simple enough.
- What is more interesting is that “the level of prior episodic learning does not substantially moderate the efficacy of testing,” and “…recall testing can be employed as a potent learning tool across most if not all levels of prior content mastery” Gupta, et al. (2021:734). In teacher plain language – don’t wait for the content to be mastered to start leveraging the advantage of testing over restudy.
Testing should not be part of the post-mortem. It is the physical exam.
Again, linking back to Dr Pooja Agarwal comments from December 2021:
