To really learn,quit studying and take a retrieval test

One of those methods repeatedly studying the material is familiar to legions of students who cram before exams. The other having students draw detailed diagrams documenting what they are learning is prized by many teachers because it forces students to make connections among facts.

The students were asked to predict how much they would remember a week after using one of the methods to learn the material. Those who took the test after reading the passage predicted they would remember less than the other students predicted,but the results were just the opposite.

I think that learning is all about retrieving,all about reconstructing our knowledge, said the lead author,Jeffrey Karpicke,an assistant professor of psychology at Purdue University. I think that were tapping into something fundamental about how the mind works when we talk about retrieval.

The researchers engaged 200 college students for the experiments,assigning them to read several paragraphs about a scientific subject how the digestive system works,for example.

The students were divided into four groups. One read the text for five minutes. Another studied the passage in four consecutive five-minute sessions.

A third group engaged in concept mapping, in which,with the passage in front of them,they arranged information from the passage into a kind of diagram.

The final group took a retrieval practice test. Without the passage in front of them,they wrote what they remembered in a free-form essay for 10 minutes. Then they reread the passage and took another retrieval practice test.

A week later all four groups were given a short-answer test that assessed their ability to recall facts and draw logical conclusions based on the facts.

The second experiment focused only on concept mapping and retrieval practice testing. In this initial phase,researchers reported,students who made diagrams while consulting the passage included more detail than students asked to recall what they had just read in an essay.

But when they were evaluated a week later,the students in the testing group did much better than the concept mappers. They even did better when they were evaluated not with a short-answer test but with a test requiring them to draw a concept map from memory.PAM BELLUCK