Improving Students’ Long-Term Knowledge Retention Through Personalized Review
- 20 January 2014
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Psychological Science
- Vol. 25 (3), 639-647
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504302
Abstract
Human memory is imperfect; thus, periodic review is required for the long-term preservation of knowledge and skills. However, students at every educational level are challenged by an ever-growing amount of material to review and an ongoing imperative to master new material. We developed a method for efficient, systematic, personalized review that combines statistical techniques for inferring individual differences with a psychological theory of memory. The method was integrated into a semester-long middle-school foreign-language course via retrieval-practice software. Using a cumulative exam administered after the semester’s end, we compared time-matched review strategies and found that personalized review yielded a 16.5% boost in course retention over current educational practice (massed study) and a 10.0% improvement over a one-size-fits-all strategy for spaced study.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- Do students think that difficult or valuable materials should be restudied sooner rather than later?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013
- Very long-term retention of basic science knowledge in doctors after graduationMedical Education, 2011
- Long-term retention of basic science knowledge: a review studyAdvances in Health Sciences Education, 2010
- Spacing Effects in LearningPsychological Science, 2008
- Using tests to enhance 8th grade students' retention of U.S. history factsApplied Cognitive Psychology, 2008
- Comparing Two IRT Models for Conjunctive SkillsLecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008
- Learning Factors Analysis – A General Method for Cognitive Model Evaluation and ImprovementLecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006
- Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis.Psychological Bulletin, 2006
- Explanatory Item Response ModelsPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,2004
- Optimizing the learning of a second-language vocabulary.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1972