Boustani, Shaun; Owens, Caleb; (2019) Active Tasks and Test-Potentiated Learning: What Works and Why? Presented at: 46th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology, Wellington, New Zealand.

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Abstract

Active learning is a popular and effective teaching method which is thought to increase students interactivity with materials. Often juxtaposed against passive styles of teaching, such as lecturing, the benefits of active tasks are robust and reliable (Freeman et al., 2014). Despite this, little is known about why and how these tasks produce their pedagogical benefits. The current research reviews one subset of active tasks: intermittent testing, and investigates how practice retrieval might enhance memory and potentiate new learning. Testing involves the retrieval of previously learned information from memory, and has been shown to improve performance restudy on a range of memory tasks using many different material types (Rowland, 2014). In a series of experiments interpolated retrieval was compared to restudy and elaboration tasks, using a novel experiment design. Learning materials were first introduced within an original study block, after which half of the original items were either retrieved, restudied, or elaborated upon, whilst the other half were not re-exposed. Ultimately, memory for all materials was superior in retrieval conditions, suggesting the existence of both direct and indirect benefits of retrieval. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.

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