Quizzes Can Enhance Learning

At ITeach 2008, professor of psychology Mark McDaniel presented his recent research on the value of quizzing in promoting learning. Frequent quizzes, he argued, provide a means not only of measuring student learning, but also of promoting it. His research suggests that faculty should use quizzes to help their students learn and retain factual information and that they should “quiz more, not less.” Quizzes that utilize short-answer questions, he added, appear to foster more pronounced improvements in learning than quizzes that utilize multiple-choice questions.

Reviewing data from studies he and colleagues conducted at Washington University, the University of New Mexico, and Colombia Middle School in Illinois, Mark showed that course material that was included on quizzes was remembered better on subsequent exams than material that was not included on quizzes (but which students may have studied on their own). Reflecting on the studies’ findings, he suggested that when students take quizzes that require them to retrieve facts from memory, their knowledge of those facts is enhanced. Mark also pointed out that frequent testing probably has indirect positive effects in keeping students motivated and helping them develop the habit of studying course material on a regular basis, rather than waiting until a major exam.

To read more about the research, see The Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 53, Issue 40, June 8, 2007, p. A14 or http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i40/40a01401.htm .