Successive relearning is a highly effective learning technique that involves students taking several practice tests on to-be-learned material (with corrective feedback), with each test separated by a time interval of a few days. We had students engage in successive relearning in a large introductory Psychology course throughout a semester. We found that students not only remembered more course content (compared with those who restudied the material for approximately the same amount of time), but they also reported less anxious affect, felt that they had better attentional control and more mastery over the material, and had more accurate metacognitions. These benefits were not observed immediately but required several practice testing sessions before they were revealed. Overall, the results suggest that there are multiple learning outcomes that benefit from repeated testing similar sessions that are spaced apart over time and that similar sessions should be implemented regularly in real classrooms. (Higham, Zengel, Bartlett, & Hadwin, 2021)
Professor Katherine Rawson talks about how to build successive relearning into classes
References
Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2015). Practice tests, spaced practice, and successive relearning: Tips for classroom use and for guiding students’ learning. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1(1), 72.
Higham, P. A., Zengel, B., Bartlett, L. K., & Hadwin, J. A. (2021). The benefits of successive relearning on multiple learning outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Rawson, K. A., Dunlosky, J., & Sciartelli, S. M. (2013). The power of successive relearning: Improving performance on course exams and long-term retention. Educational Psychology Review, 25(4), 523-548.
Rawson, K. A., Vaughn, K. E., Walsh, M., & Dunlosky, J. (2018). Investigating and explaining the effects of successive relearning on long-term retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 24(1), 57.
Rawson, K. A., Dunlosky, J., & Janes, J. L. (2020). All Good Things Must Come to an End: a Potential Boundary Condition on the Potency of Successive Relearning. Educational Psychology Review, 32(3), 851-871.