In Learning as a
Generative Activity: Eight Learning Strategies That Promote Understanding,
the authors, Logan Fiorella and Richard E. Mayer, define generative learning as,
‘…helping
learners to actively make sense of material so they can build meaningful
learning outcomes that allow them
to transfer what they have learned to solving new problems.’1
One of the strategies described to foster this benefit of
generative learning is self-testing. Testing as a means to learning is quite à la mode in the edublogosphere now, referred
to also as retrieval practice. Retrieval Practice has its own website (http://www.retrievalpractice.org/)
courtesy of @poojaagarwal and even a
great guide to read over.
As regards to boundary conditions for self-testing, Fiorella
and Mayer say,
‘In
general, free-recall, cued-recall, or otherwise open-response practice tests
appear to be more effective than
practice recognition tests, such as a multiple-choice test.’2
According to the authors the reason for this could be
because of a generation effect that occurs when a learner is forced to generate
an answer being more powerful than the effect generated by the learner having
to only recognise the correct answer from a choice.
I’ve started trialling setting output tasks where, after handing the books back, I give the
students 10-15 minutes to do a free-recall test on the formation of a tense,
for example, without looking back at any notes or text books.
Allowing for time for students to write all that they can
about the present tense, for
instance, and then taking the books
in later to identify common misconceptions and to see how each student has interpreted
the tense (I sometimes provide prompts like its formation, irregulars and
meaning in English) has allowed me not only to use testing as a way of
hopefully making the retrieval of everything to do with the tense more
accessible in future but also to focus on seeing how well the students have
made sense of the tense and developed a meaning of it in their own words.
It’s been a subtle shift from the traditional Dedicated
Improvement and Reflection Time which focuses on students correcting and redrafting
work solely without much of a reference to using this time to promote
generative learning outcomes through practice testing of concepts which were
covered in previous lessons. The students have responded fantastically well to
this and we have also adopted these free-recall tests as extension tasks in
class; students going to a blank page and writing all that they can about a
tense covered last week, term or year.
This is something that in terms of preparing students for
the one-off writing exam I am considering using with more frequency next year.
Not only these free-recall types of testing to do with previously taught
grammar concepts but interleaving topics with free-recall tasks which focus on
students writing under real-operating
conditions-see Gianfranco Conti’s blog on 16 tips for effective grammar
teaching in the foreign language classroom.3
The writing exam is the area that I have been looking at
recently. The following below are a set of writing tasks which mirror the types
set by AQA. I will write about some simple ways that I will be using these to
promote retrieval practice and support the students ahead of this one-off exam in
a future post. If anyone would like me to email them these practice tasks
please let me know.
Notes
1Logan Fiorella and Richard E. Mayer, (2015) Learning as a Generative Activity Eight
Learning Strategies That Promote Understanding, New York, Cambridge University Press. p. vii.
2Logan Fiorella and Richard E. Mayer, (2015), p.
119.
