The effects of prequestions on classroom learning.

Abstract

Studies have shown that prequestions-asking students questions before they learn something-benefit memory retention. Prequestions would seem to be a useful technique for enhancing students' learning in their courses, but classroom investigations of prequestions have been sparse. In the current study, students from an introductory psychology course were randomly assigned to receive prequestions over each upcoming lesson (prequestion group) or to not receive prequestions (control group). At the end of class, students in the prequestion group remembered the material better than students in the control group, but this benefit was specific to the information that was asked about in the prequestions. When memory for other, nonprequestioned portions of the lesson were tested at the end of class, the prequestion group performed similarly to the control group. On a follow-up quiz 1 week later, both groups showed a memory advantage for material that was tested at the end of class 1 week prior, compared with information from the same lesson that was never tested. However, this benefit was comparable between the prequestion group and the control group, suggesting that students benefit from retrieval practice, but prequestions add little, if any, enhancement to this effect. (PsycINFO Database Record

Priming productive study strategies with preparatory quizzes in an engineering course

“…The present study shows that the pretesting principle (or test‐potentiated learning) can be extended to having an effect on study activity and achievement in a college course. In short, this study supports the pretesting principle, which asserts that students learn better when they are asked to take practice tests before a lesson (Carpenter et al, 2018; Richland et al, 2009). The present study adds to the literature by directly identifying changes in learner's study behavior, namely how they allocate their study time.…”

“…Importantly, positive effects of taking practice tests have been demonstrated in classroom settings (Karpicke, 2017; McDaniel, Agarwal, Huelser, McDermott, & Roedigner, 2011; Roediger, Agarwal, McDaniel, & McDermott, 2011; Schwieren, Barenberg, & Dutke, 2017). For example, in a classroom study involving pretesting, Carpenter, Rahman, and Perkins (2018) found that asking college students to answer questions before a lecture improved subsequent performance on a quiz, but only for the pretested content. Overall, there is emerging evidence for the potential of the pretesting principle in classrooms.…”

Selective effects of errorful generation on recognition memory: the role of motivation and surprise

“…This research has produced mixed results. Some experiments have found that pretesting improves subsequent retrieval of the pretested material, but does not benefit other, non-pretested information (Carpenter, Rahman, & Perkins, 2018;Pressley, Tanenbaum, McDaniel, & Wood, 1990;Richland et al, 2009;Toftness, Carpenter, Lauber, & Mickes, 2018). Other studies, by contrast, have found that pretesting improves memory for both pretested and nonpretested information (Carpenter & Toftness, 2017), or that pretesting does not significantly benefit retrieval at all (Geller et al, 2017).…”

Pan and Sana (2021) Pretesting vs. posttesting: Errorful generation, prequestions, and retrieval practice

“…Thus, pretesting followed by studying can benefit learning. That pretesting effect has been demonstrated for science texts (e.g., Richland et al, 2009), video lectures (e.g., Toftness et al, 2017), and foreign language vocabulary (e.g., Potts & Shanks, 2014), as well as at various retention intervals (e.g., Kornell et al, 2009), in laboratory and classroom settings (e.g., Carpenter et al, 2018), and with pretesting in cued recall and multiple-choice format (e.g., Little & Bjork, 2016). Although benefits of pretesting are commonly limited to memory for directly tested materials (e.g., James & Storm, 2019;Toftness et al, 2017), transfer of learning to materials that were not directly tested has sometimes also been observed (e.g., Carpenter & Toftness, 2017;.…”