From the NYT:
In an experiment published late last year, two University of Texas psychologists threw out the final exam for the 900 students in their intro psych course and replaced it with a series of short quizzes that students took on their laptops at the beginning of each class.
Turns out, taking tests on a regular basis seems to be good at teaching people how to do something.
This seems intuitive to me, as isn’t this what the real world application of knowledge will require? Aren’t we learning so that we can use this information?
I wonder if we should basically get a lecture, or watch a video, or read a short excerpt of something, and then go into recall mode. Either building something with that knowledge, or being forced to recall it in various ways repeatedly.
If I didn’t know any better, which I don’t, I’d simply say that learning should be practicing exactly what’s going to happen in the real world. And that means building with the knowledge, and recalling it.
