In the minds of the general public, university assessment conjures up images of students “cramming” for end-of-term exams. Traditionally, students would spend the days before an exam filling their short-term memories with a multitude of facts to be regurgitated under the pressure of time and then promptly forgotten. We now know that this type of practice is ineffective and that there are much better, research-based assessment models we can adopt. However, for a number of reasons many courses are still examined in a traditional manner. So, faced with teaching a course with a final, high-stakes exam, what study advice should we give our students? This is was the overarching research question for a study that was recently published in the Journal of College Science Teaching.

The researchers administered a likert scale type questionnaire to 1270 first and second year students after completing their exams at the University of Health Science and Pharmacy in St. Louis, Missouri. The questions students were asked were: approximately how many hours they spent preparing for the exam, which study methods they used as a percentage of their total study time and which methods they felt were the most helpful. In this last category the study methods students ranked were:

• Rereading the textbook
• Conceptual clicker questions in class
• Mathematical problems in class
• Working through new review questions set by the teacher
• Reviewing old exam questions
• Reviewing homework problems
• Reading through quizzes used in the course

Students saw clicker questions in class (conceptual); questions set in class (mathematical problems) and homework problems as the most useful. However, students spent the majority of their time studying using old exams and class slides. Rereading the textbook and reading quizzes were ranked as less useful. Although the authors did find some correlations between study method and exam performance, the effect sizes were small. The authors were thus unable to make any definitive claims about which methods were actually more useful, other than concluding that students who performed poorly were less likely to use the study methods that were deemed the most helpful by the group as a whole.

Comment: Usually, when I write for this newsletter I try to highlight research that discusses new and interesting ideas in higher education. It is not always easy to find good articles. The study I have selected this time actually has a number of issues, but I think the topic is important and worth discussing. 

The first issue I have with this particular article is the assumption that students will always need to study intensively to pass end-of-term examinations. As I mentioned at the start of this article, there are a number of much better alternatives to single, end-of-course, high-stakes exams. Continual assessment with weekly hand-in tasks, for example keeps students involved and—provided timely feedback is given—students (and teachers) know how things are going. Such courses encourage learning rather than “cramming”. 

The second issue I have is with the research design of the study. There has already been a great deal of research carried out into study methods. Unfortunately, in this case the authors asked students for their own opinions about which methods were helpful and compared this ranking to exam performance. Actually, we already have a good idea from earlier studies about which study methods are the most effective (see for example Dunlosky et al 2013). We also know that students tend not to be aware which methods are most useful (Persky & Hudson, 2016). Therefore, given what we already know, it would have been better for the researchers to compare student beliefs about the effectiveness of study methods with known effectiveness as shown by research, before linking this information to the students’ actual performance on the exam.  

In an earlier article I wrote about effective study methods when I reviewed Carpenter et al (2022) for Aktuell högskolepedagogisk forskning "Can you help students plan their learning?". Here, three methods stand out in the literature, as having strong positive effects on student learning: spacing, active retrieval practice and working with other students.

Below is what I wrote in 2022 about the first two approaches:

Spacing refers to spreading out learning over an extended period of time. For the same time spent, shorter repeated learning activities show clear gains over a single intensive learning event. Active retrieval is a form of memory exercise where instead of reading through the same material several times, students read once and then attempt to recall what they have read, before returning to the material to check their performance. Adopting these two simple approaches (preferably together) has been shown to boost learning across a wide range of educational settings.

As for working with other students I gave the following advice:

Collaborative learning is an approach that has been shown to have benefits for all involved parties (see for example Johnson & Johnson, 1987 and Laal & Ghodsi, 2012). Thus, I would recommend meeting in study groups as a complement to the techniques discussed in the article. For those of you who are interested in learning more about the topic of research-based autonomous learning there is a short (30 minute) course available online (in Swedish). This might be something to recommend to your students: Evidensbaserade studietekniker — en kurs om att studera effektivt

These three approaches to learning for an exam have been shown to be the most successful in the literature. If like the authors of this article you are trying to help your students deal with high-stakes, end-of-course exams, I would suggest providing them with this information and actively encouraging them to use these three approaches. 

Text: John Airey, Department of Teaching and Learning

The study
Waters, D., & Jilakara, R. (2023). Determination of the Helpfulness of Physics Exam Study Methods. Journal of College Science Teaching, 52(6), 38-45.

Keywords: learning for exams, study habits, problem solving, group discussions, spacing, retrieval practice 

• References
• Carpenter, S. K., Pan, S. C., & Butler, A. C. (2022). The science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 496-511.
• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public interest, 14(1), 4-58.
• Laal, M., & Ghodsi, S. M. (2012). Benefits of collaborative learning. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 31, 486-490. 
• Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1987). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Persky, A. M., & Hudson, S. L. (2016). A snapshot of student study strategies across a professional pharmacy curriculum: are students using evidence-based practice?. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 8(2), 141-147.