Using Timed Practice Exams to Improve Student Learning Daniel A. - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Daniel A. Turner; Ted M. Clark; Matthew Stoltzfus Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

Using Timed Practice Exams to Improve Student Learning

http://go.osu.edu/OHPKAL18 @_daniel_turner

• Introduce evidence-based practices to support ideas behind

practice exams.

• Discuss the development and delivery of timed practice exams.
• Present the results and overall findings through two versions of

practice exams.

• A PDF file of this talk (and other resources) can be found at

go.osu.edu/OHPKAL18

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Objectives of Talk

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What are the pros and cons of providing practice exams to students?

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

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• Students studied prose passages
• After – combination of free-recall

tests (no feedback) and/or restudied the material.

• Final retention tests:
• 5 minutes later
• 1 week later
• Assessment produced

substantially greater retention!

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Testing Effect

Roediger, H.L., III, & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). Psychol. Sci., 17, 249–255.

• Interleaving (ABCABCABC) vs.

blocking (AAABBBCCC)

• 4 experiments that tested how

well students recalled organic compounds.

• In all 4 cases, interleaving was

shown to be more beneficial than blocking.

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Distributed Practice

Eglington, L. G., & Kang, S.H.K. (2017).

• J. Appl. Res. Mem. Cogn., 6, 475–485.

• Bringing learned information to mind from long-term memory –

this is simply the testing effect!

• How can we implement this in our classes?
• One of the best methods is to use frequent low-stakes or no-

stakes quizzes.

• Wanting to combine this with distributed practice, I looked

toward low-stakes practice exams.

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Retrieval Practice

• With a time constraint, students need to
• eliminate choices and make a guess when needed.
• work problems at a faster rate.
• determine when to move on for challenging problems.
• Emphasize the metacognitive application!
• Focus remaining study time on areas of weakness, instead of

areas of strength.

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Motivation for Timed Practice Exams

• Delivered 1 practice exam in class:
• Exam delivered via Learning Catalytics.
• 55-minute multiple-choice exam (actual exam = 75 minutes).
• No feedback, correct answers provided after class was over.
• 3 days before exam.

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Version 1.0 (Fall 2017)

Practice Exam Question

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Actual Exam Question

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• A. 72%
• B. 10%
• C. 9%
• D. 9%

The % correct for the entire 1210 sequence was 64%. Is this significant?

Practice Exam Question

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Actual Exam Question

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A. 2% B. 2%

• C. 93%

D. 2% Significant increase – but the question is structured differently.

• For each actual exam, Dr. Clark and Dr. Stoltzfus delivered 3

practice exams outside of class:

• Exam delivered via Mastering Chemistry
• Multiple-choice exams of varying times (30-75 minutes)
• Embedded feedback (for both correct and incorrect answers)

provided after the deadline.

• Delivered at various times before the exam.

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Version 2.0 (Spring 2018)

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The Value of Feedback

Butler, A. C. & Roediger, H.L., III (2008). Mem. Cogn., 36, 604–616.

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Practice Exam Question

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Practice Exam Question – Feedback

• We gave this same question on an exam the previous semester.
• 55% of students answered this question correctly.
• What does this mean?

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Actual Exam Question

• The questions are very similar – why did the percentage only go up 7%?

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Comparison of Practice vs. Actual Exam

Practice exam – 50% correct Actual exam – 57% correct

• When the practice exam was the previous semester’s exam, the

results were very similar – encouraging at this point.

• This suggests the students are taking the practice exams

seriously.

• The transfer of knowledge between a concept covered on the

practice exam to the actual exam is unclear.

• There are too many variables to sort this out using our current

methodology.

• This process has also helped improve our common exam creation.

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Overall Findings/Conclusions

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Questions?