"Critically discuss the most effective revision techniques for improving exam performance”

Testing

Question Generation

Retrieval Practice

Found to be the most effective

Answering questions about what they're learning whilst they're learning it before their knowledge is fully consolidated

Medium to large effects on retention performance in both lab and natural learning settings

One explanation: Promotes retrieval practice when learners attempt to remember studied content whilst learning (Karpicke 2017)

Direct effects by strengthening memory traces through retrieval attempts and mediated effects by providing feedback on the extent of learning (Roediger and Karpicke 2006)

Enhance retrieval of other information that is learned after the initial testing phase (Pastotter and Bauml 2014)

:( Focus on the retrieval of facts acquired during learning rather than on transfer effects (Carpenter 2012)

CP Thomas, Weywadt, Anderson, Martinez-Papponi, and McDaniel (2018) reported beneficial and even crossover effects of testing for different knowledge formats in an online learning environment with adult students learning about neuropsychology

Factual questions during the initial testing phase enhanced the final test performance concerning application knowledge, whereas initial testing with application questions improved the final test performance concerning factual knowledge

McDaniel, Thomas, Agarwal, McDermott, and Roediger (2013) found similar transfer effects for the learning of science in middle school but with one exception: Factual questions in the initial testing phase did not improve performance in application questions in the final exam, whereas application questions yielded transfer effects on factual questions in the final exam (d = 0.34).

:( Pan and Rickard (2018) conducted a meta-analysis on transfer effects of testing. Transfer was defined relatively broadly, occurring when the cues or required responses (or both) in the initial testing phase and in the final performance tests differed. This definition includes close (e.g., rephrasing information) and far transfer (e.g., drawing new inferences).

The meta-analysis revealed a small to medium effect of initial testing on transfer performance (d = 0.40). This effect was moderated by several conditions and was negligible when these conditions were not present.

Transfer effects were stronger (a) for certain kinds of transfer tasks, for example, for application and inference questions (weaker or even negative transfer effects occurred for questions in which stimulus and response were rearranged compared with the initial test, or for initially presented but untested material), (b) when the initial testing involved the retrieval of broad knowledge, not of isolated concrete facts, and (c) when retrieval was successful in the initial testing phase.

Results showed that generating questions in an open book format (testing) is a powerful strategy in a real life context may help students enhance and consolidate knowledge for longer than restudying

Important as it aids a central aim of education: promoting the long-term retention of knowledge in order to apply it in different contexts which supports acquisition of new knowledge

Yields medium to large effects on comprehension, recall and problem solving (Song 2016)

:) might stimulate deeper processing and reflection of the learning material as well as retrieval practice in comparison with restudying

:( In most of the reviewed studies, learners were trained on how to generate questions effectively and practiced this strategy in advance and under supervision. In addition, the learning material involved only short text passages, and only short-term effects were examined.

Generation Effect

Generating information allows subjects to remember it better than reading material

Bertsch, Pesta, Wiscott and McDaniel (2007) found substantial variability of effect size in a meta-analysis of 86 studies due to moderator type

Note taking

Note taking has been found to be more effective when hand written rather than on a computer (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014)

Recording notes instead of just listening during lectures and then reviewing them (Di Vesta and Gray 1972; Kiewra 1985; Kobayashi 2006)

An issue with using note taking to revise is that students tend to not complete their notes, meaning they tend to onky have a third of important information from lectures (Austin et al 2004, Titsworth 2004)

When this occurs, there is roughly a 5% chance that they'll be able to recall the missing information during examination (Einstein et al, 1985; Howe, 1970)

Suggests that focus should be on increasing completeness of note taking

E.g. Providing organisational lesson cues which aid students with the organisation of the lecture and how the information provided in them slots into this (Titsworth 2004)

Retrieval practise is usually still effective without feedback, but feedback enhances the benefits, it also promotes the acquisition of knowledge allowing it to be applied in different contexts (Henry L. Roediger III and Andrew C. Butler, 2010)

There's a lot of evidence backing its effectiveness:

One study found large effects of recitation (retrieval) in relation to studying children in grades 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 for breif biographies and nonsense words. This suggested that adopting recitation into the curriculum could benefit retention and learning (Gates, 1917)

Another investigated the effect of testing with college students on retention of the material learnt in their lectures and found strong evidence for the benefits of retrieval practice in laboratory and natural contexts (Jones 2019)

Found retrieval practice increases long-term retention more than repeated study and that it is more successful the sooner it's attempted

:( Time-consuming as it is more effective with longer intervals supported by a study where students learned Swahili-English word pairs through repetition, almosy twice as successful when there was more retrievals compared to one

Difficult to explain what cognitive processes are involved as studies have inconsistent results

One found that it was more effective when subjects generated more of the word (Fiedler et al.1992, Experiment 1) whereas one found simple generation rules are applied at the end of word fragments (Donaldson and Bass, 1980) or rearranging letters (Naime and Widner, 1987)

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Depending on what design is used, the effect can be deemed ineffective