Learning is a lifelong journey, but it takes effort and time to absorb knowledge. The fact is, during most of one’s student life before college, learning is often passive. It is more important than ever to direct one’s own learning process, but the transition between two different learning styles can be challenging for newly graduated high schoolers. In an increasingly decentralized world for educators and learners alike, it is more important than ever to be motivated when learning a new subject.

Andrew Butler, an educational psychologist affiliated with the Washington University in St. Louis, in his recent talk at the McMaster Conference on Education & Cognition (EdCog) on goal-directed learning, discussed strategies that can potentially improve self-directed learning outcomes.

Many in the educational research community believe that repeatedly retrieving the information acquired through learning to be an effective strategy. Previously dubbed the “testing effect”, it has been a fascinating topic for generations of educational psychologies and educators. Contradictory to what you might be thinking, the “testing effect” is not related to standardized testing widely used in schools around the world, rather it refers to the process of silently reciting the knowledge to oneself, also called covert recitation. Early evidence of its effectiveness goes back centuries. English philosopher, in his 1620 book Novum Organum, argued in favour of the benefits of taking an initiative to recollect newly acquired information from within one’s own mind.

It wasn’t until 1917 when Dr. Arthur Irving Gates conducted the first large-scale experiment to test out the theory.

Gates recruited groups of school-aged children from different grades and asked them to read and remember a piece of unfamiliar text, including ones made up of nonsense syllables and parts of a biography. Students in the same grade were divided into groups, each spending varying percentage of the time on “testing” themselves on the material they just learned. That is, they were encouraged to recite the materials to themselves but were allowed to glance at the reading material if they feel the need to refresh their memories. They were tested 3 to 4 hours later how well they could recite them. For the non-sense syllables, Gates found that in almost all age groups, the more time spent on attempting to recite, the higher percentage they could recall the text, aside from grade 1 students. The groups spent ~60% of their time “testing” themselves post-reading had the highest recall rate for the biographical texts.

The study strongly supported of the idea that frequent recalling of memory improved the effectiveness of learning.

Gates published the findings in his PhD thesis, and later went on to becoming a professor at Columbia University, with a focus on educational psychology.

His study did not come without limitations: it only focused on the effect of self-testing. Nevertheless, Gates believed practicing knowledge recall is a good strategy to solidify learning.

Herbert Spitzer, another prominent educational psychologist in the same era as Gates, concluded that students who got their first test shortly after learning, when it was still fresh, were able to retain knowledge for longer. This was in contrast with those who were first tested long after learning, which were prone to forgetting what they learned at a natural rate.

Andrew Butler, along with colleagues Shana Carpenter and Steven Pan, conducted a series of review to compare the effectiveness of learning strategies. Building on top of the hallmark conclusions from Gates and Spitzer, researchers derived further effective strategies. This includes spacing out the learning of a large amount of knowledge over a longer period, active memory retrieval, as well as combining the two.

Spacing out the learning means that during the course of learning, instead of assigning work based on only a single topic, a smaller portion of several different topics were instead fused into an assignment each time. A surprise test sometime during the semester showed that this strategy significantly improved students’ test performance over the traditional way of topic segmentation.

Numerous studies following Gates and Spitzer also explored the highly effective strategy of deliberate memory retrieval after having learned something new, with some retaining the memories for years.

Not surprisingly, when both strategies were combined, it could produce positive results. The authors compared two conditions, first with the previously touted spacing method, and another with both spacing and additional retrieval-based practicing. The staggered learning combined with retrieval testing successively reduced the time needed for learners to fulfill the learning criterion.

From over a century of research in the field of educational psychology, there are many learning strategies that can help us get a better grip at the knowledge.

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. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00089-1

Kim, Y., Zepeda, C. D., & Butler, A. C. (2023). An Interdisciplinary Review of Self-Regulation of Learning: Bridging Cognitive and Educational Psychology Perspectives. Educational Psychology Review, 35(3), 92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09800-x

Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 20–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.003

Zepeda, C. D., Een, E., & Butler, A. C. (2024). The Mnemonic Effects of Retrieval Practice. In C. D. Zepeda, E. Een, & A. C. Butler, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.858