Joshua Juanzo

1 The Advantage and Disadvantage of Retrieval Practice on Student’s Learning 2 The Advantage and Disadvantage of Retrieval Practice on Student’s Learning The administration of tests in the classroom setting is one of the most important educational activities that help to measure students’ learning. The use of tests even suggests that it does not only benefits in assessment for learning but can also be an effective tool in promoting retrieval practice. (Hinze & Rapp, 2014). The retrieval practice is also known as the testing effect. It refers to the retrieving of previously learned information from memory. It consists of doing a free or cued recall, activity exercises, answering questions from text material, taking tests such as multiple-choice questions, and asking questions. (Latimier, Peyre, & Ramus, 2020). Researches about retrieval practice were found more than a century and become a widely known topic due to its educational implications. It includes long-term memory retention, reading comprehension, metacognition, and transferring of knowledge (Littrell, Friend, Caccamise, & Okochi, 2015; Agarwal, Nunes & Blunt, 2021). This supports the study conducted by Roediger and Karpicke (2006), where they compare the student’s performance by giving them different studying techniques and providing them a test later based on the given material. The results showed that the students exhibited better recall when they take a test after studying. It also suggests how it helped the retention in the long-term memory of the students. Among the benefit of using retrieval practice was also found effective compared to re-reading or re-exposure material. The made experiment of Butler (2010) suggests that retrieval practice in relation to repeated testing produces better transfer of learning than repeated studying. In this experiment, students were exposed to study six prose passages (i.e. contains several critical concepts together with other information). The procedure was to repeatedly restudied both two of the passages and isolated sentences that contained critical concepts from another different two passages. This was followed repeated test on the critical concepts for another two passages. After each test question, the students 3 were provided of feedback which is based in the same condition with the restudied isolated sentences. After a week the students took a final test. The finding of the experiment showed that restudying has limited effect for better retention compared to the repeated testing. Furthermore, Rowland (2014) describes that retrieval practice affects the use of both simple and complex materials. He reported that the use of more complex learning contents – the stronger is the retrieval practice. It was evident as well more particularly when giving feedback during the practice. Furthermore, a similar benefit was also found specifically with a combination of different training tests such as multiple choice with short answers or free call (Adesope, Trevisan, & Sundararajan, 2017). Generally, the evidence-based results of implementing retrieval practice contributes in the development and improvement of student’s learning. It provides an opportunity in terms of knowledge gap intervention that promote further studying on related topics; it became useful also in terms of improving the organization of the learned material on mental aspects; improves better association of knowledge in a different context; enhance discrimination skills between similar materials and memory retention (Latimier, Peyre, & Ramus, 2020). The role of retrieval practice also shows its benefit to improve the use of acquired learning in new situations. In addition, practice with practical and relevant questions was also beneficial in higher-order learning - more specifically when there is an inclusion of scaffolding (Weinstein, Madan & Sumeracki, 2018). On the other hand, the advantage of retrieval practice is still subject to a particular successful result of retrieval. The chances that when retrieval success is low, there is a reduced improvement effect to memory (Smith, Roediger, & Karpicke, J. D, 2013). The above citations demonstrated research-based information that taking the test or facilitating test after studying is not just a mere assessment in the context of an academic setting but is also beneficial for the improvement of memory. Over a hundred (100) years ago, there was already substantiation that supports the use of testing to strengthen memory (Gates, 1917, as cited in 4 Weinstein, Madan & Sumeracki, 2018). This was supported by researches about the effectiveness of retrieval practice in producing learning among college students, preschoolers, elementary-aged children, middle-school students as well as high school students (Fritz, Morris, Nolan, & Singleton, 2007; Karpicke, Blunt, & Smith, 2016; Karpicke, Blunt, Smith, & Karpicke, 2014; Lipko-Speed, Dunlosky, & Rawson, 2014; Marsh, Fazio, & Goswick, 2012; Ritchie, Della Sala, & McIntosh, 2013; McDaniel, Thomas, Agarwal, McDermott, & Roediger, 2013; McDermott, Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014). It was also suggested, that retrieval practice not only improves memory but also improves meaningful learning of information that applies to the classroom. Based on a study by Smith and Karpicke (2014), retrievalbased learning strategies can be facilitated by simply asking the students to write out all their ideas about the topic without taking a look at their learning materials. Teachers can also give students practice such as short-answer or multiple-choice, open-ended prompts to recall information as well as doing concept mapping. Furthermore, a study conducted by Weinstein, Nunes, Kapricke (2016), showed that inserting short-answer questions into online learning modules can also improve student performance as a way of retrieval practice. In this study, the questions in the online learning module were manipulated among the two groups of students – for some, the question where integrated throughout the module and the other were all presented by the end of the module. Based on the result, there is a higher initial success on the short-answer questions when the questions were integrated throughout the module. However, questions in the module did not matter for performance on a later test of learning from the module. While tests were known to promote retrieval practice that can improve learning and memory, it is uncommon that it may also imply less of a learning benefit. Some students underutilize retrieval practice as a learning strategy due to the gradual benefit experience of it which only happens often after an interval (Hui, Bruin, Donkers & Merriënboer, 2021). There were also emerging researches that retrieval practice may result in a different effect due to individual differences. For instance, Brewer and 5 Unsworth (2012) reported that using retrieval practice is negatively correlated to both episodic memory and fluid intelligence of the individual. Furthermore, Tse and Pu (2012) reported that test anxiety was negatively correlated with the effect of retrieval practice for individuals with lower working memory scores. For this reason, test anxiety might be a significant factor in whether an individual can benefit from the use of retrieval practice. Test anxiety refers to the experience of the individual during a test-taking activity which involves heightened rates of tension, worry, task-irrelevant thoughts, and direct uncomfortable bodily reactions (Sarason, 1984 as cited from Clark, Crandall, & Robinson, 2017). According to Hembree (1988), test anxiety is usually evident with lower levels of academic achievement particularly with evaluative pressure (Cassady, 2004). It was found also that those individuals with high levels of anxiety are associated to test anxiety and performance (Grooms and Endler, 1960 as cited in Clark, Crandall, & Robinson, 2017 ). Factors that cause test anxiety that affect academic achievement are due to anxietyrelated thoughts which occupy the working memory resources at the time of testing. This was said to dysfunctional test-related process particularly with information retrieval and problem-solving. In a conducted experiment by Hinze and Rapp (2014) in examining the effects of performance pressure on retrieval practice, it was found that test anxiety may reduce the learning benefit of retrieval practice. Particularly, the said experiment use manipulated pressure to both high‐stakes or low‐stakes quizzes, and assessed memory and comprehension of content on each quiz and final test. Based on the quiz performance, it was found that learners adapted to high-pressure quizzes which also demonstrate the equivalent quiz performance in low-stakes conditions. On the other hand, the result of the final test. showed that participants performed better after low-stakes quizzes compared to the high-stakes quizzes. This also shows that only low-stake quizzes based on a rereading control group cause the participants to better performance. Moreover, the participants were observed to display some sensitivity as they are having difficulty retrieving while under pressure. 6 In contrary to the conducted experiment of Hinze and Rapp, a survey conducted by Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger, McDermott & McDaniel, (2014) among 1408 middle high school and high school student – it was found that there were 92% of the students (i.e. based on classes in which retrieval practice occurred) reported that retrieval practice helped them to learn while 72% revealed that the use of retrieval practice reduced the feeling of nervousness during the unit test and exam. Hence, the made survey resulted in a correlation between retrieval practice and classroom test anxiety as well as the selfreported study applicable for pre-college students. It was recommended by this research in encouraging K-12 educators about the benefit of retrieval practice in the classroom in improving learning and reducing test anxiety. Across the made literature review and founded researches, retrieval practice had made significance toward the educational context. Its effect greatly contributes as an assessment tool and a learning strategy that can be applied in schools or a typical teaching-learning process. Hence, it is recommended that future research should continue to explore the interaction between the benefit of retrieval practice and test anxiety. Though most studies had presented the many valuable factors of how retrieval practice contributes to different cognitive processes and its implication to education, it needs further evidence of its effect on a psychological concern like test anxiety. The implication for studying the correlation between retrieval practice and test anxiety could be an improvement of providing educational techniques as well as the development of additional learning strategies. This could also provide support in several different theories which might include how this strategy could influence motivation to student’s learning, academic achievement, and psychological health. 7 References: Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: a meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research,-, 87(3), 659–701. https://doi. org/10.3102/-. Agarwal, Pooja & D’antonio, Laura & Roediger, Henry & McDermott, Kathleen & Mcdaniel, Mark. (2014). Classroom-based programs of retrieval practice reduce middle school and high school students’ test anxiety. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition-/j.jarmac-. Butler, A.C. (2010) Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 36,- Cassady, J. C. (2004). The impact of cognitive test anxiety on text comprehension and recall in the absence of external evaluative pressure. 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