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Spaced Retrieval Practice Increases College Students’ Short- and Long-Term Retention of Mathematics Knowledge

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Abstract

A major challenge college students face is retaining the knowledge they acquire in their classes, especially in cumulative disciplines such as engineering, where ultimate success depends on long-term retention of foundational content. Cognitive psychologists have recently recommended various techniques educators might use to increase retention. One technique (spaced retrieval practice) involves extending opportunities to retrieve course content beyond a customarily short temporal window following initial learning. Confirming the technique’s utility requires demonstrating that it increases retention in real classroom settings, with commonly encountered educational content, and that gains endure into subsequent semesters. We manipulated spaced versus massed retrieval practice in a precalculus course for engineering students and followed a subset of students who proceeded into a calculus class the following semester. Spacing versus massing was manipulated within- and between-subjects. Within-subjects, students retained spaced content better than massed content in the precalculus course. Between-subjects, students for whom some retrieval practice was spaced, compared to those for whom all practice was massed, performed better on the final exam in the precalculus class and on exams in the calculus class. These findings suggest that spaced retrieval practice can have a meaningful, long-lasting impact on educational outcomes.

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Notes

  1. With two exceptions, no covariate had a significant main or interactive effect on any performance measure in either Introductory Calculus for Engineers or Engineering Analysis I. One exception is a significant interaction between gender and objective type in the within-subjects analysis of final exam performance in Introductory Calculus for Engineers, F(1, 35) = 9.77, p = .004, η 2 = .183. The interaction arose because a significant difference in performance between spaced and massed objectives occurred for male but not female students. The other exception is that high school GPA was significantly associated with performance on the first unit exam in Engineering Analysis I, F(1, 64) = 4.63, p = .035, η 2 = .063. Both findings, while potentially interesting, may be spurious because, one, the number of female students was less than 20 (N = 13) and hence too small to instill much confidence in the result (see Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn 2011), and, two, high school GPA was not significantly associated with any other performance measure.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, 2301 S. 3rd St., Louisville, KY, 40292, USA

    Robin F. Hopkins & Keith B. Lyle

  2. Department of Engineering Fundamentals, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Jeff L. Hieb & Patricia A. S. Ralston

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  1. Robin F. Hopkins
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Correspondence to Keith B. Lyle.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The Institutional Review Board at our university waived the requirement for subjects in this research to provide informed consent. However, as stated in the manuscript, students were given the option to decline to have their performance data included in our analyses. No student declined. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Hopkins, R.F., Lyle, K.B., Hieb, J.L. et al. Spaced Retrieval Practice Increases College Students’ Short- and Long-Term Retention of Mathematics Knowledge. Educ Psychol Rev 28, 853–873 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9349-8

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