Students get high marks through self-test as a learning tool.

West Lafayette, Indiana—According to a new study by Purdue University, college students take notes on final exams again and again because they can use their study time to prepare more wisely.

"We know that when students practice retrieving knowledge and promoting learning, they will take self-tests," said Kapik Jeffrey, an assistant professor of psychology. "Students can really benefit from it because their own tests use simple research, such as cards. However, the key is not to drop 1 burn the card once you feel that you have mastered the material. Keep it as your rotation and keep practicing retrieving this information. "

Kapik's research found that if someone spends too little time on actual retrieval, college students are more likely to repeatedly invest to explain their reading time.

"My research found that it is an illusion that how many people really study during the self-test," said Kapik, a cognitive psychologist and memory expert.

This illusion is rooted in students' feelings to answer them, because their practices are easy to test. For example, students use teaching cards to study, and when they think they know about material life, they may eliminate some cards.

"This is the so-called extraction fluency," he said. "If you review the data, or even perform it several times, it will be of great benefit to learning and long-term preservation. Because people will not continue to test themselves because of being cheated by retrieval fluency. The answer is so easy to come to mind for the first time that they think they know the answer and further fall off the self-test card. However, this is not a good long-term learning secret. "

The results of this study were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Principles last month. Kapik has conducted four experiments over 150 for college students to learn Swahili and English vocabulary. In each experiment, students learn words in the form of computer teaching cards, and then according to different conditions, Kapik assigns learning skills or participants' choices. A week after the students came back, they finally took the exam.

Whether students choose their own learning strategies or are assigned, they learn better during the self-test, from the format of electronic teaching cards to all materials. Students don't take the final test if they give up the material because they know they are testing themselves.

Students' study of computer technology has been assigned, what to receive, how to learn, and sometimes even tips. In the experiment, some students can choose how they want to learn, and they may give up words that they think they know well. So many people can't remember the words when they return to the last week after the exam.

"Surprisingly, we know that self-test retrieval is very powerful, but people don't use it, or don't use it," he said. "These are college students who are generally successful in academic performance, so this just shows how powerful fantasy can be."

Kapik's work was funded by the American Psychological Association's thesis research award and postgraduate research scholarship, and was also funded by the American Psychological Foundation/Graduate School of Psychology. He will continue to study learning technology, and his next project is how to evaluate learning strategies involving students and choose key points in the teaching process.

Author: Amy Patterson Nebat, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu.

Source: Geoffrey IV Kapik, 765-494-0273, karpicke@purdue.edu.

Purdue University News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

Please note: Journalists who are interested in the copy of this magazine article can contact apatterson@purdue.edu Amy Patterson Nebat of Purdue News Agency at 765-494-9723.

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abstract

Metacognitive control and strategy selection;

Decided to study and practice retrieval.

Jeffrey IV Karpik

The practice of retrieval is a powerful technique to improve learning, but how can students adjust their learning in the case of frequent retrieval? In four experiments, the foreign language project was carried out in the cross-disciplinary knowledge learning and testing stage. When an item is assigned to repeated testing, repeated learning or deletion, it is recalled, which has a strong effect on repeated extraction and retention of learning. However, when the subjects are handed over to their own learning control, they may choose to test, research or delete items, and many subjects choose to delete items instead of actual retrieval, resulting in poverty retention. In addition, the learning stage is added in the test, trying to improve the retrieval by strengthening the subsequent coding research and learning. However, when students are handed over to their studies, they do not try to use search as a way to control early marriage, or they should often promote the best study. The experiment found a convincing metacognitive illusion, which occurred in self-regulated learning. Once students remember a project, they often think that they have had a "lesson". This leads students to practice terminating appointments instead of searching, which is a strategic choice to keep the final result poor.