Abstract
Lectures that employ retrieval practice of a hierarchical principle structure help students learn the basic facts and improves their exam scores.
Highlights
Some learning strategies are more effective than others [1], and retrieval practice is one of the learning strategies with the most positive evidence [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
A two-tailed t test was performed to determine whether retrieval practice significantly affected basic factual knowledge compared to problem study
In phase 1 of this study, we showed that students in introductory mechanics have a grave lack in basic factual knowledge, and that a short intervention with retrieval practice of a hierarchical principle structure can dramatically increase scores on a declarative facts test
Summary
Some learning strategies are more effective than others [1], and retrieval practice is one of the learning strategies with the most positive evidence [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The effects from retrieval practice are so robust across different contexts, both in labs and in applied settings, that many cognitive scientists recommends its use for education [8,12]. There is still a need for more research on retrieval practice in educational settings [1,12], and especially in physics education where it has hardly been studied at all as pointed out in a recent publication in this journal [11]. There seems to be an underlying fear that students will acquire disconnected facts, and have lower understanding [14]. Even Dunlosky et al, who strongly encourage efforts to improve memory for facts, supply caveats against “robotically memorizing facts” [1].
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