Review Websites Improve College Exam Performance, but Review Strategy Might Not Matter

Abstract

Retrieval practice has been shown to improve learning and memory, but most of these studies occurred within laboratory settings. We explored whether external review websites influenced exam performance in university-level psychology courses. The websites randomly assigned students to either a read condition (i.e., the question and answer were presented simultaneously) or a test condition (i.e., the question was presented by itself, with the answer being revealed after a retrieval attempt). Students could utilize the websites as frequently as they desired throughout the semester, and separate websites were created for each exam within a particular course. Results suggested that the review websites improved exam performance, but there was no advantage for those in the test versus read group. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Keywords:

• College
• psychology
• retrieval practice
• websites

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 First key press latencies reflect the amount of time that elapses between the presentation of the question and the first key press when typing a response (and thus can only reflect trials wherein the student responded in the test group), whereas total test time reflects the amount of time that elapses from the question being presented to the time that the participant clicks the submit button to display the answer (which is again limited to the test group as the question and answer were displayed simultaneously in the read group). Total time reflects the total amount of time that a student spent on a given trial before advancing to the next question (note that both groups were eligible for this analysis).

2 For exams in which they used the website to review.