Start a lesson with a test on the previous lesson: much better for retention!

According to a study at Washington University in St. Louis, researchers showed that tests help students remember what they learned, even about material that wasn't on the exam.

So a "study-test-study-test" approach would be preferable to a "study-review-test" method.

Reviewing a topic doesn't provide as much improvement for the rest of the content, probably due to the fact that it is a more passive process than testing is. Frequent testing, not revision, is a better key to long-term retention.

The classroom is not the lab

Although the study contradicts many others on the effects of testing on retention, its methodology comes much closer to the reality of students than most other studies, if only because of the time lag between study and testing.

One of the implications in education is that it is good to give tests with short answers rather than multiple choices. Indeed, the exercise is much more demanding to come up with an answer yourself than to first consult a list of ready-made answers.

In distance education, what better way than to place short tests not at the end of a lesson, but at the beginning of the next one, to establish some delay between study and test; the recall of the data and their context then involving more effort.. and effects.

For the full article: Testing Improves Retention--Even of Material Not on Exam - Scientific American

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