The Best Way to Learn: Taking a Test?

What do you think is the best way to learn: Study­ing the mate­r­i­al repeat­ed­ly, draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learn­ing, or tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read?

A recent study pub­lished in Sci­ence and sum­ma­rized in this New York Times arti­cle found out that tak­ing a test was the best method!

stu­dents who read a pas­sage, then took a test ask­ing them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 per­cent more of the infor­ma­tion a week lat­er than stu­dents who used [the] two oth­er methods.

… learn­ing is all about retriev­ing, all about recon­struct­ing our knowl­edge,” said the lead author

So do we need to have more test­ing in schools? Maybe not:

Some tests are just not learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. We need a dif­fer­ent kind of test­ing than we cur­rent­ly have.”

A good read to learn more about how we learn and the best ways to do so.

Relat­ed post: Learn­ing habits, learn­ing styles: The most recent findings

3 Comments

  1. Steven | TEM on February 3, 2011 at 10:17

    This fur­ther con­firms why we should take mul­ti­ple prac­tice exams before we take an SAT, GRE, AP exam or what­ev­er. Prac­ti­cal advice!



  2. Bey C. on February 28, 2011 at 5:56

    This is very encour­ag­ing for me! I am a mom of a dyslex­ic chil and have been prepar­ing “pre-tests” for him at home on his lessons before his actu­al test at school. He does very,very well in these home pre-tests but no always with good results when he takes the actu­al test at school…but at least now I know that I should just con­tin­ue doing and hope­ful­ly it will help him be bet­ter in retriev­ing and orga­niz­ing his knowl­edge as he gets older.



  3. Dr Pascale Michelon on March 1, 2011 at 1:58

    So glad to be of help! Indeed, learn­ing how to learn can be key.



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SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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