Ensuring Long-Term Retention

Frequent low-stakes tests

Intersperse your curriculum with quizzes and small tests that hold little stakes. These quizzes with different benefits should be used at the end or the beginning of class. The end-of-class quiz should focus more on encoding, while the beginning-of-class quiz should focus on retrieval. However, it is in the student’s interest to vary the format of the quizzes rather than use the same format repeatedly.

Given that the end-of-class quiz will likely cover the material presented, the focus should be on having students generate answers and summaries about the topics. Instead of just giving them answers they choose between, they should be prompted to answer in their own words, forcing them to generate answers to topics they have just learned in one way. The generation of answers will require them to put the concepts into words.

Quizzes at the beginning of class should have a less encoding and more recollective approach. These quizzes often cover material taught days before, so the demand for perfect wording and recollection should be less. However, these quizzes should instead act as an incentive for the students to try and recall, think back to what was said, and try to retrieve their memories.

These quizzes should be frequently given. While it is possible to have one every class, that frequency makes it predictable. Instead, have it be a weekly thing, but with no indication of when and where. The students should be taken by surprise when it happens while still being given frequent opportunities to practice. Important to note is that they need to be low-stakes or even incentivized to ensure that students are just focusing on learning the material and not performing at a certain level.

Why this application?

Frequent practice gives students several practice opportunities, helping them reach automaticity. Furthermore, by giving them quizzes for encoding and retrieving, they are being trained in both, given time to practice their encoding skills through generative processes and retrieval skills through recollection. The process of generating also creates an increased effect of encoding and retention. By varying the timing and, hopefully, the structure of the quizzes, students are given varied situations where they need to apply their skills, which ensures that they do not simply get into the rhythm and cognitive disengagement of repeated, straight practice.

Have students generate summaries about their learning

This application can be used as an alternative to low-stakes quizzes. If quizzes are too much, then students should at least be asked to generate a summary of specific topics or what they have learned. These summaries should either be targeted at topics that are difficult to grasp or be general and cover large swaths of material. These summaries should only be one or two sentences long and can be submitted but should not be required or graded. The point is to have students probe their knowledge and be able to generate summaries. If these are being submitted, the professor should quickly review them and see certain things. If the summary was about a specific topic, then look over the summaries and notice any patterns of misunderstanding or a lack of detail. Any pattern noticed should be covered in class to clear things up. If the summaries were general, look for any material that might be missing in most of the summaries. Look at what stuck with them and what did not. Then, in the lesson, one can cover the material missed by the class to make up for the lack of understanding.

Why this application?

Generating summaries is a great way of encoding material by making students go through their understanding and putting it into words, increasing encoding and creating a moment of retrieval. If they are to be submitted, then students experience the challenge of making the summary presentable and understandable. The challenge then helps students reach automaticity. Furthermore, the summaries work as teacher feedback, where they can be used to gather what has worked and what has not, allowing the professor to make an addendum to the material and ensuring that all students are on the same page.

Connect to the real-world

Your material should always be connected to the real world. Depending on the material, this becomes either more or less difficult. Yet, even if it is difficult, there should be times when the material is anchored in real-world experiences and examples. There are several ways to do this: create examples from life events, have students generate connections to the real world, anchor questions in the real world, etc. Anytime you can create a connection to a real-world example or topic, you should.

The ideal application of this is to get students to create associations between material and real-world topics. An example of this in class is simply asking students to develop ways to apply the material in certain scenarios, such as how developmental psychology can be applied and understood in the real world. Which domains does it help with? These questions can always be interspersed in the material but should never remain rhetorical. Students should actively generate answers to these questions, not just think about them.

Why this application?

Connections to the real world create a deeper process of cognitive engagement with the material, encouraging a more robust encoding. Moreover, real-world applications become a varied challenge from the repeated nature of theoretical learning, giving students a new type of practice they can anchor on to and learn from. Students who are forced to generate further engage in deep encoding practices. Together, this creates a scenario where students can deeply engage with the material, leading to greater encoding.

Teach smaller components first

During your lessons, any complex task should be divided into several parts, where you go part by part, ensuring mastery within these parts. When mastery has been reached within the individual parts, they can be added together and shown as a whole, illuminating the complex topic at hand. The crucial aspect of this application is gradually working with the whole; students need to be given time and opportunities to deal with smaller steps before combining them. When combining them, the professor must illustrate how these steps create the complex issue. It needs to be illuminated so that students can understand that this complex, difficult task and issue is simply a collection of smaller tasks.

Why this application?

By teaching smaller components first, students undergo part-whole training to master small steps before combining them. In doing so, they can increase their confidence in their competence, which would otherwise not be there if faced with the big issue. Furthermore, viewing a large complex task as a collection of smaller steps helps students gain a deeper understanding of the issue and then be able to remember it more easily by remembering the steps needed.