Poster #15 - Amplifying the Pedagogical Benefit of Pretests: Interleaved Pretests Potentiate Both Tested and Related Concepts

• In Event: 75.043 - MTCC Poster Session 17
  In Poster Session: 75.043-5 - Epistemic and Generative Interventions Promoting Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Can combining different strategies that engage different underlying processes to enhance learning yield even greater learning? Pretests (answering questions before content has been taught) potentiate subsequent learning by activating relevant prior knowledge; interleaving (studying different concepts mixed together rather than one at a time) enhances learning by drawing attention to discriminative features. Undergraduates enrolled in an abnormal psychology course were pretested on classifying different psychological disorders at the beginning of lecture every week. Half of the pretests interleaved the different disorders and half of the pretests blocked questions by disorder. Final exam results showed that blocked pretests led to better learning only for the pretested concepts; interleaved pretests led to better learning for all concepts contained in the subsequent lecture.

Authors

• Faria Sana, Athabasca University

• Veronica X Yan, University of Texas at Austin