Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63105-4899, USA.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2011 Dec;17(4):382-95. doi: 10.1037/a0026252. Epub 2011 Nov 14.
Three experiments examined whether quizzing promotes learning and retention of material from a social studies course with sixth grade students from a suburban middle school. The material used in the experiments was the course material students were to learn and some of the dependent measures were the actual tests on which students received grades. In within-subject designs, students received three low-stakes multiple-choice quizzes in Experiments 1 and 2 and performance on quizzed items was compared to that on items that were presented twice (Experiment 2) or items that were not presented on the initial quizzes (Experiments 1 and 2). We found that students' performance on both chapter exams and semester exams improved following quizzing relative to either not being quizzed or relative to the twice-presented items. In Experiment 3, students were given one multiple-choice quiz in class and encouraged to quiz themselves outside of class using a Web-based system. The assessment in this experiment was a short answer test in which students had to produce answers, but we also used multiple-choice tests. Once again, we found that quizzing of material produced a positive effect on chapter and semester exams. These results show the robustness of retrieval practice via testing as a learning mechanism in a classroom setting using the subject matter of the course and (in most cases) the tests on which students received grades as the dependent measures. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that retrieval practice in the classroom can boost academic performance.
三个实验检验了测验是否能促进来自郊区中学六年级学生对社会研究课程材料的学习和保持。实验中使用的材料是学生要学习的课程材料，一些因变量是学生实际考试的成绩。在被试内设计中，学生在实验 1 和 2 中接受了三次低风险的多项选择测验，测验项目的表现与两次呈现的项目（实验 2）或初始测验中未呈现的项目（实验 1 和 2）进行了比较。我们发现，与未接受测验或两次呈现的项目相比，测验后学生在章节考试和学期考试中的表现都有所提高。在实验 3 中，学生在课堂上接受了一次多项选择测验，并被鼓励使用基于网络的系统在课外自我测验。本实验的评估是一个简答题测试，学生必须给出答案，但我们也使用了多项选择题。同样，我们发现对材料的测验对章节和学期考试产生了积极影响。这些结果表明，在课堂环境中，通过测验作为一种学习机制的检索练习具有很强的稳健性，使用课程的主题内容和（在大多数情况下）学生获得成绩的测试作为因变量。我们的结果增加了越来越多的证据，即课堂上的检索练习可以提高学业成绩。
