JULY 18, 2014  By HENRY L. ROEDIGER III

TESTS have a bad reputation in education circles these days: They take time, the critics say, put students under pressure and, in the case of standardized testing, crowd out other educational priorities. But the truth is that, used properly, testing as part of an educational routine provides an important tool not just to measure learning, but to promote it.

In one study I published with Jeffrey D. Karpicke, a psychologist at Purdue, we assessed how well students remembered material they had read. After an initial reading, students were tested on some passages by being given a blank sheet of paper and asked to recall as much as possible. They recalled about 70 percent of the ideas.

Other passages were not tested but were reread, and thus 100 percent of the ideas were re-exposed. In final tests given either two days or a week later, the passages that had been tested just after reading were remembered much better than those that had been reread.

What’s at work here? When students are tested, they are required to retrieve knowledge from memory…

via How Tests Make Us Smarter – NYTimes.com.

By SHANNON DOYNE and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO MARCH 17, 2010

Interactive Quiz on Galileo

Overview | How can quizzes be used as learning tools and assessments? What is the educational value of not only taking a quiz, but also creating one? Are there significant differences between interactive and traditional quiz formats? In this lesson, students take an online quiz, then create their own quizzes about scientists or science-related topics. They then take one another’s quizzes and consider their efficacy for introducing a new topic, reviewing material and assessing knowledge in a graded exam.

Teachers | How and when do you use interactive materials like online quizzes? How do you usually review material before a quiz or test? Tell us here.

Materials | Computers with Internet access, research materials.

Warm-Up | Play a short round of a quiz game, in the style of “Jeopardy!,” with the class. Tell students that you are the host, and the category is Scientists. Here are the five clues:

1. This theoretical physicist has offered a new approach to investigating the origin and evolution of the universe. (Answer:Stephen Hawking.)
2. This scientist spent years in Africa closely observing chimpanzees, work that greatly increased human understanding of chimps and raised provocative questions about human evolution. (Answer: Jane Goodall.)
3. The discovery that the universe continues to expand is the work of this astronomer, for whom a space telescope is named. (Answer: Edwin Hubble.)
4. He discovered the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, but contrary to popular belief, he did not invent the telescope. (Answer: Galileo Galilei.)
5. This biologist’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” catalyzed a national debate about the use of pesticides. (Answer: Rachel Carson.)

Then debrief the activity. Ask: How many of the five questions did most of you know the answer to? If you didn’t know the answers, do you feel like you learned something new? Did the quiz pique your interest in any of these scientists? If so, which ones, and why? If not, why not? And if you did know the answers, did this activity refresh your memory? Could these questions be useful for a review before an exam? How about for the exam itself? Did you find competing against classmates encouraging? Discouraging? Would you have preferred to take the quiz on paper or computer? Would you like to do more quizzes like this in class?

End the warm-up with a discussion of learning styles. Ask students to tell about their experiences with preparing for tests by using flash cards, rewriting their notes, listening to recordings of reading their notes aloud, having friends or family members “quiz” them, etc., and which methods they prefer and find the most effective.

Related | Have students take the interactive quiz All About Galileo. If Internet access is not available in class

via Testing 1, 2, 3: Creating Quizzes to Gauge Science Knowledge – NYTimes.com.