Participants spent less time doing their practice tests when they were multiple choice than when they were short answer, and because performance was about the same, multiple choice self-testing was shown to be the better choice when participant-controlled. But again, participants didn’t score as high when they dropped items after getting them right. On average, participants had to do 3 practice trials to get one right when they were in control, but it took about 7.4 times for participants to get a question right 5 times. And in the participant-controlled condition, they only spent about 10s per item, vs. 29s in the experimenter-controlled condition. That’s a lot more time spent self-testing when they were trying to answer them right 5 times!
The researchers calculated this by looking at “gains per minute” – that is, how much higher was performance on the final test for every minute spent working. On the final multiple choice test, the folks who controlled their own study gained 17% per minute of studying, while the folks who had to get questions right 5 times only had 7% gains per minute of studying. Wow.
Takeaway
What does this all mean? It’s not as simple as saying that one way of self-testing is better than another. What’s great about this study is that they didn’t simply look at final performance and conclude that the experimenter-controlled condition was better. Instead, they considered competing demands. Yes, long-term retention matters. It’s our goal as educators. But time matters too. We have a lot on our plates, a lot of material to get through, a lot of different activities we’d like to do to improve learning. Students have a lot on their plates too – multiple classes to study for, extracurriculars, relationships, life.
My takeaways from this study are that :
Retrieval practice is effective!
If you’re strapped for time, don’t sacrifice the retrieval practice, but maybe just keep working until you can recall everything once.
If you have extra time, it’s not a bad idea to redo the questions you got right a few more times so you can make some extra gains.