Reflecting

Engage in the following discussion by responding to one another.

Read the following excerpt from “The Quiz Factor” by Daniel J. Klionsky ( CBE--Life Sciences Education 2008 7:265-266).

(1) Share with your peers at least one interesting, relevant, or surprising thing that you learned. Explain why it is interesting, relevant, or surprising to you. For example: After reading the excerpt, reflect on your current approaches to studying. What changes can you make based on this research? Alternatively, ask a question about something in the excerpt.

200 words

“While participating as one of the instructors at the 2005 National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology, I attended a talk by Dr. Mark McDaniel that revolutionized the way I thought about teaching, and provided an interesting insight into student study practices and learning. In brief, repeated studying turns out to be relatively ineffective in enhancing learning, whereas testing after studying has a beneficial effect. Unfortunately, few students or faculty seem to be aware of this finding, or incorporate it into their pedagogical practices. After reading a recent paper in Science on a related topic (Karpicke and Roediger, 2008), I decided that the points raised by Dr. McDaniel and colleagues need to be highlighted in a journal that is read by life sciences faculty members.

One of my concerns is that Dr. McDaniel is a professor of psychology, and accordingly, the paper describing his studies that I found so intriguing is published in the European Journal of Cognitive Psychology ( EJCP; McDaniel et al., 2007), which is probably not on the reading list of most life scientists. Therefore, I summarize what I consider to be the most pertinent points of this research:

· 1. Taking a test after studying promotes learning and retention.

· 2. Quizzing, but not additional reading of the same material, improves subsequent test scores.

3. Short-answer quizzes produce better results than multiple-choice quizzes.

Dr. McDaniel refers to the ‘testing effect’ to explain memory gains that result from testing after reading. Most students study by reading the assigned material (usually right before the exam, hence one problem with infrequent testing), then rereading it, sometimes repeatedly. Many students will underline or highlight the text, ending up with essentially yellow pages, but not having gained any further understanding or ability to recall the information. For many students there is simply too much material and too little guidance on what is truly important. Taking a quiz after the reading immediately points out what material was or was not learned appropriately. Quizzing with feedback (either going over the quiz in class, or allowing the students time to consider their answers and subsequently reviewing the graded quiz) provides a more positive learning outcome than multiple readings without quizzes.”