Test-Enhanced Learning

Memory is a vital area of study. The continuing research conducted in fields such as: psychology and neuroscience can bring insight that will someday pilot discoveries in new ways to enhance memory and find treatments or cures to disorders such as Alzheimer, PTSD or memory loss. Additionally the study of memory and its effects on learning is equally important to research for some of the very same reasons.

We all wish we could do better on our tests and retain our knowledge years after taking the class. This wish can come true with the information in the article The Power of Successive Relearning: Improving Performance on Course Exams and Long-Term Retention. This passage talks about the importance of practice tests and spaced study. The combination of both of these techniques is called successive relearning. Successive relearning for use in college will build a stronger long-term memory of the material and promote better grades on exams. Two experiments were performed to test the effectiveness the techniques used in successive relearning. Experiment 1 tested student performance on exams using self-regulated practice and restudy-only versus successive relearning. Experiment 2 tested student

This study was conducted on a college campus, where students are routinely expected to recall when tested on previous lecture material. As explained by Bartlett (1932), there is a difference in how memories are formed and retrieved. If the student has not committed the information to memory, it can easily be altered if there is pressure placed on the student to recall.

Various memory retention techniques have been identified throughout the centuries. Several sources have explained why these techniques should be used and of their effectiveness. More recently, a 2009 report was released by Association for Psychological Science, where learning techniques were analyzed and their effectiveness explained. Some of the techniques from this report will be mentioned, but the focus is more on how each that are presented relate to my own personal experience towards.

Each item on the quiz corresponded to an individual slide that was presented, but all the questions on the quiz were in random order. This was done to measure how much information was retained by the subjects’ short term memory. One week later, the exact same quiz was administered again to the same sample of students. This time, however, the test looked to see how much information students recalled in terms of long term memory.

There are many steps in the process of remembering information to be recalled when taking the exam. The first step is for the information from our textbook must be encoded to be able to be stored in the brain and recalled from the short-term and long-term memory. A memory is encoded through our perceptions based on our senses, attention and emotions creating sensations. These sensations are then decoded in the sensory areas of the cortex and are then combined as one memory in the hippocampus. These memories are then passed on to our short-term memory where the information will stay for a short amount of time. Your short term memory can only hold 7-9 pieces of information for no longer than 20 seconds. After these 20 seconds these short term

This was a study conducted at IUP on undergraduate students to see if processing information at certain levels would improve memory recall. During the study, we presented the participants with a PowerPoint of information on a made-up country. The participants was randomly assigned to a shallow, medium, or deep processing instruction, which explained to them how to take notes throughout the presentation. After, students’ recieved a distractor task for 15 minutes, and after given a multiple-choice test on the information showed on the slides. The results showed that there was no significant difference between note taking instructions and the number of correct answers. All three-task instructions in the study showed similar means on the recall test.

Memory is defined as “an active system that receives information…puts that information into usable form, organizes it as it stores it away and then retrieves the information from storage” according to the Revel definition. (Revel) The way that people learn varies among different personalities but is brought about by experience or practice, long term memories are those that pretty much stay with us permanently. Using this information to help students learn more efficiently and to keep that information with them I found this article on the APA website. According to the article there are three research proven ways to study that increase the comprehension of the students and preserve the information in long term memory. The three

The relationship between effective studying methods and memory is a proven and well developed theory that is built upon the basis and understanding of cognitive evaluation. Robinowitz and Mcauley (2014) explain that memory strategies for studying is what helps ease the process of learning information and retrieving it from long term memory to bring it to working memory. This topic can teach students different methods of obtaining information that will benefit their studying and memory skills for future educational purposes. In their experiment which targeted the effects of ease of processing on the use of perception strategies, researchers Robinowitz and Mcauley (2014) set out to investigate whether or not these strategies would have an effect on a students’ observation and implementation on learning information. The subjects in this experiment consisted of 120 students at the University of Illinois. Robinowitz and Mcauley tested the participants by using two different trials and three different lists per trial, each consisting of 24 words. Ranked on a scale from easy to difficult, the first list was at an easy level and included words that had a connection with one another which made it easier to follow. The subsequent list was ranked at a

I have a test for psychology coming up and I want to make sure that I do well. I’m going to buckle down and read through this textbook so I can retain as much information as I can. Too bad it’s not as easy as it seems. A person can’t just read something quickly and expect to be able to repeat the info days later. There is a process that goes on in order for information to go to long term memory.

The current educational system places students through many testing procedures which causes students to constantly evaluate their memorization of concepts. This evaluation becomes dependent on the confidence the student has on the memory of a concept. However, current research has proven that an individual’s confidence in a memory is extremely inaccurate. Moreover, it is evident that the common studying methods that a student uses only enhances an individual’s confidence but does not illustrate how well they understand the material. Therefore, as confidence is often inaccurate, it should not be taken into consideration when assessing an individual’s memory/understanding. Likewise, students should alter their studying strategies to rely on concrete

Testing-effect is the act of testing one’s memory. It helps to increase the memory which is the long term memory and helps to retrieve better. Testing-effect helps me memorize and recall knowledge better on the

Memory is divided up into three types: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. In order to memorize something a three part process is required. These three parts include encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is the process which the student would read the textbook and go over any information that would be needed for the exam. This part of the process would put the information into his or her short-term memory in a form that could later be converted into long-term memory. Storage is the next part of the process; the student would rehearse the material he went over previously so it could be converted into long-term memory and stored until he would have to retrieve the information. A strategy that would assist with storage

Learning and retaining new information is a part of everyday life, so finding techniques to help enhance learning and retaining information for recall can be beneficial to almost everyone, especially students. It is believed that testing can help increase the likelihood of later retrieval of information (McDermott, Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014). Testing with an opportunity for feedback can be the most beneficial for later recall, as opposed to just recalling the information for an exam (Karpicke & Roediger, 2007). The purpose of the current study is to examine if testing can help to improve memory recall more than regular studying.

Memory is an important aspect throughout many of our lives, and is key for remembering material for exams, the layout around us, and memorable events in our life. There are many types of memory, such perceptual memory, short term memory, and long term memory. Depending on what one wants to learn, long term memory is the most ideal spot to store information such as material for an exam.