Research to Practice to Research: Intrinsic requirements of implementing and studying spaced retrieval practice in STEM courses

Abstract

This Full-Length, Research-to-Practice paper discusses intrinsic requirements that may challenge instructors if they attempt to implement spaced retrieval practice in their courses. During the first year of National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #1912253, project leaders led nine Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) instructors through a series of five interactive workshops to develop learning objectives and quiz questions. Most of the STEM instructors had to redefine their existing, multifaceted learning objectives into more specific objectives with an appropriately fine grain-size for the practice. They also worked to develop multiple questions that test the same objective with (1) comparable difficulty and (2) similar cognitive processes. Project leaders noticed that a within-subjects, counterbalanced study design presents additional challenges to implementation. Instructors were able to work around difficulties during break-out sessions in workshops and in one-on-one sessions, especially when given examples from their own discipline in one-on-one feedback.In this paper, we first describe the current state of spaced retrieval practice research and the purpose and plan of our active NSF grant. We then detail the implementation requirements we have discovered. Lastly, we summarize our findings with bullet-point, STEM-practitioner-centered statements about implementing spaced retrieval practice in the classroom. Identifying potential challenges of implementation and solutions to these challenges is an important step in getting the powerful memory tool of spaced retrieval practice into the STEM classroom.