L19 SUPPLIED RESEARCH SUMMARY 1
Established findings: retrieval practice, spacing, and desirable difficulty

Read this during L19. Mark it up. In activity A3 you will state each
study's limitation in your own words.

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A. The testing effect
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Study:  Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning:
        Taking memory tests improves long-term retention.
        Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255.

What was done
  Undergraduates at one US university (Washington University in St. Louis)
  read short prose passages of 256 and 275 words. After a first reading
  they either restudied a passage or took a free-recall test on it: write
  down everything you remember, with no feedback. Experiment 1 had 120
  students. Experiment 2 had 180 students in three groups:
    SSSS  study the passage four times
    SSST  study three times, then one recall test
    STTT  study once, then three recall tests
  A final recall test came 5 minutes, 2 days or 1 week later in
  Experiment 1, and 5 minutes or 1 week later in Experiment 2.

What was found (Experiment 2, share of the passage's idea units recalled)
                 after 5 minutes   after 1 week
    SSSS              83%              40%
    SSST              78%              56%
    STTT              71%              61%
  Rereading won at 5 minutes. Testing won at one week, by a wide margin.
  Before the final test, students rated how well they expected to remember
  the passage a week later (7-point scale). The SSSS group was the most
  confident (4.8), SSST was in between (4.2) and the STTT group was the
  least confident (4.0). The group that felt best prepared remembered the
  least.

Honest limitation
  Small groups (30 students per cell in Experiment 2) from one university.
  Two short passages. One kind of test (free recall) and no feedback. The
  result has since been replicated widely, but this single paper on its
  own shows the effect for one kind of material under lab conditions.

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B. A review of ten study techniques
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Study:  Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., &
        Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective
        learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
        14(1), 4-58.

What was done
  Five researchers reviewed the published evidence on ten common study
  techniques and rated each one's usefulness as high, moderate, or low.

What was found
  Two techniques were rated high utility: practice testing and distributed
  practice (spacing study out over time). Rereading and highlighting or
  underlining were among those rated low utility.

Honest limitation
  A review rates the evidence that exists. "Low utility" means the evidence
  for broad benefit is weak, not that the technique never helps anyone. The
  ratings are the authors' judgments across many different studies.

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C. Spacing
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Study:  Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D.
        (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and
        quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 354-380.

What was done
  The authors pooled 839 comparisons of spaced versus massed practice from
  317 experiments reported in 184 articles.

What was found
  The best gap between study sessions depends on how long you need to
  remember. The longer the retention interval, the longer the best gap.

Honest limitation
  The studies are "verbal recall" tasks: word lists, facts, vocabulary. The
  synthesis does not by itself show the same pattern for solving physics
  problems or writing code.

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D. Desirable difficulties
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Source: Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on
        yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to
        enhance learning. Chapter in "Psychology and the Real World",
        pp. 56-64.

What it says
  This is a chapter that explains the idea, not a single experiment. The
  authors write that "conditions of learning that make performance improve
  rapidly often fail to support long-term retention and transfer." They name
  four difficulties that help: varying the conditions of practice,
  interleaving topics instead of blocking them, spacing study sessions, and
  using tests rather than re-presentation as study events. They warn that
  rereading gives a sense of familiarity that learners mistake for
  understanding.

Honest limitation
  "Desirable" is doing work in that phrase. A difficulty helps only if the
  learner can still succeed at it. The chapter does not give you a rule for
  telling a useful struggle from a useless one in your own course.

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E. Feeling of learning in a physics class
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Study:  Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., &
        Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of
        learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom.
        PNAS, 116(39), 19251-19257.

What was done
  149 students in introductory physics at Harvard each received two class
  sessions: one taught as a polished lecture, one where students worked the
  problems in small groups before seeing the solution. Same handouts, same
  content. After each class they rated how much they felt they learned, then
  took a 12-question test.

What was found
  Students scored higher on the test after the active class. They rated
  their feeling of learning lower after the active class. Struggle felt
  worse and worked better.

Honest limitation
  One university, two topics, two class sessions, immediate test only. The
  authors note students might come to value active classes over a full
  semester.

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What this summary does NOT tell you
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None of these studies involve AI. They tell you how memory and skill form.
Summary 2 covers what is known about AI specifically.
