Frequent testing improves learning, reduces mind-wandering

Ars Technica : One of the questions surrounding massive open online courses ( MOOCs ) is whether they are more or less effective at teaching than traditional classes. A commonly highlighted problem with MOOCs is how easy it is for students to be distracted from the videos. Karl Szpunar of Harvard University may have a solution, taken from real-world classrooms: pop quizzes. Based on previous study he’d done on learning effectiveness, he divided an online lecture into four pieces. Half of the class were given brief arithmetic exercises followed by subject matter tests after watching each piece. The other half only performed the arithmetic after watching each piece. A group not part of the normal class was tested for “mind-wandering” by participating in a brief question and answer session between each piece. At the end of the lecture all three groups were given subject matter tests. The group that had done the pop quizzes performed significantly better on the cumulative test than the other two groups. Szpunar hopes to perform similar tests on larger groups and in actual MOOC settings. And it seems likely that the technique of frequent quizzes on subject matter could be useful in real-world classrooms as well.