Later on in the podcast, you'll hear about how retrieval practice can be good for application of knowledge to new situations – not just fact learning. For more about how retrieval practice can help with complex and novel situations, see this post. Retrieval practice can also help with anxiety! (2)

Do students practice retrieval on their own?

The answer is no. While students often do use quizzes as a check of how much they've learned, very few of them list retrieval practice as their go-to study strategy (1). Why not? Well, it’s hard. While doing retrieval practice, it can feel like you don’t know much – and that feels bad. This leads students to be underconfident after practicing retrieval, compared to overconfident after re-reading. For more on this illusion, see this blog post about predicted and actual learning.

Megan tells an anecdote about students who come to her office and say they studied and studied – why didn't they do well? It’s probably because they didn't use effective study strategies!

Another reason why students may not practice retrieval as often as they should is that the benefits of retrieval are delayed. Retrieval is better in the long-run - it produces durable learning - but it might not feel like it’s “working” while students are actually doing it.

How can teachers integrate retrieval practice into their classrooms?

There are many different ways for students to practice retrieval – it doesn’t have to be with a formal quiz or test. Yana’s colleague, Dr. Miko Wilford, likes to play Jeopardy with her students to help them get ready for exams. You can also do starter or exit questions, which can be low or even no stakes. You can ask students to write from memory, answer open-ended questions, draw from memory, and even create concept maps from memory (3). Be careful with having students create their own questions, though – it may not be worth it (4). Prompting questions might also help – though not always (but at least, they shouldn’t hurt). See this blog post for Megan’s recent study on retrieval practice with prompts (5).

Students actually really like frequent quizzing once they get used to it. Megan and Dr. Cindy Nebel (formerly Cindy Wooldridge) recently went to Columbus State Community College to talk to instructors there, and one of the professors, Felicia Smith, talked about giving daily quizzes in some of her classes, and how students who’d experienced this reacted when they took her other classes in which she didn’t use daily quizzing.

It’s a good idea to tell students why you are including so many quizzes. This helps students understand that we’re not just doing this to be mean to them! Dr. Althea Bauernschmidt always tells students:

"I quiz because I care."

(For Althea’s latest guest post on our blog, see here).

What about flashcards?

Flashcards can be a good way for students to practice retrieval on their own, but they have to make sure they are doing it properly: actually trying to retrieve, rather than just flipping the card. A group of students in Yana’s class recently claimed that making flashcards rather than using them to practice retrieval was what helped them learn. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out what happened with that hypothesis!