Search for: All records

Interpolated retrieval enhances the learning of new information—a finding known as the forward testing effect. The context change account suggests that learning benefits are due to a shift in internal context, which can be triggered through the retrieval of either content-relevant or content-irrelevant information. In two experiments, we examined whether interpolated episodic, autobiographical, and semantic retrieval would enhance new learning of a video lecture, compared to interpolated review. Participants watched a STEM topic lecture divided into three ~5 min segments and completed their assigned interpolated activity after the first two segments. Across both a laboratory (Experiment 1, N = 249) and online setting (Experiment 2, N = 246), only episodic retrieval enhanced the learning of new material; autobiographical and semantic retrieval (content-irrelevant) did not improve new learning. Critically, we introduced a measure of context change to determine whether the level of engagement in these interpolated activities predicted recall. Engagement correlated with criterial test performance when controlling for effort (seriousness). Our results support a multi-factor explanation for the forward testing effect, providing evidence for both the context change and strategy change accounts, although we emphasize that support for context change should be interpreted with caution. 

COVID‐19 greatly increased the online delivery of higher education. But one limitation of online learning is that students often struggle to stay engaged while watching online lectures. We examined whether including an instructor's face in lecture videos (instructor visibility) enhances student engagement or learning. In two preregistered experiments, we found that instructor visibility in lecture videos did not affect either engagement or learning overall. However, participants reported higher engagement when they watched a video that aligned with their preference for instructor visibility. For example, participants who favored videos with the instructor visible reported greater engagement with such videos compared to those without the instructor, and vice versa. Additionally, we examined the effects of playback speed on engagement and learning. Our results suggest that speeded playing did not impact engagement but resulted in better learning efficiency. Lastly, using GPT, we explored participants' open‐ended responses to understand their preference for video lectures. 

In the United States, the onset of COVID-19 triggered a nationwide lockdown, which forced many universities to move their primary assessments from invigilated in-person exams to unproctored online exams. This abrupt change occurred midway through the Spring 2020 semester, providing an unprecedented opportunity to investigate whether online exams can provide meaningful assessments of learning relative to in-person exams on a per-student basis. Here, we present data from nearly 2,000 students across 18 courses at a large Midwestern University. Using a meta-analytic approach in which we treated each course as a separate study, we showed that online exams produced scores that highly resembled those from in-person exams at an individual level despite the online exams being unproctored—as demonstrated by a robust correlation between online and in-person exam scores. Moreover, our data showed that cheating was either not widespread or ineffective at boosting scores, and the strong assessment value of online exams was observed regardless of the type of questions asked on the exam, the course level, academic discipline, or class size. We conclude that online exams, even when unproctored, are a viable assessment tool.