Project Activities
Researchers will develop and test the effects of the RMF method in undergraduate and 5th -7th grade science classes. Project activities will include laboratory studies to determine how best to integrate metacognitive monitoring techniques and spaced practice into the RMF method in order to obtain durable and efficient learning for college and middle school students. These laboratory studies will vary the amount of time between study sessions, techniques to support accurate monitoring, and the number of times a student is asked to restudy an item in order to identify the optimal parameters for the RMF method. Once these decisions are made, the team will complete classroom-based studies designed to compare the RMF method to other techniques used to support student learning in authentic educational settings.
Structured Abstract
Setting
Students participating in this research project reside in northeastern Ohio.
Sample
Approximately 400 undergraduate students and approximately 100 students from eight classes of middle school students will participate in this project.
The Retrieval-Feedback-Monitoring (RFM) procedure is a computer-assisted study process based on two important principles from cognitive psychology. After initial study, to-be-learned concepts are presented one at a time, and students are asked to remember the concepts. After attempting to remember the concepts, the correct answer is presented to the student, broken down into its constituent idea units. Students then assess the correctness of their response by indicating which idea units from the correct answer were contained in their response. After this judgment, the entire correct answer is presented for restudy, and students are encouraged to actively process the concepts being restudied. The student's judgment of the correctness of their response is used to determine whether a given item needs to be practiced further, and if so, when that practice should be scheduled. Items are practiced both within and across several study sessions. Ultimately, the RMF method is intended to complement class lectures by providing an environment that will help students effectively regulate their on-going learning of key concepts from course materials.
Research design and methods
The RMF method will be evaluated by examining performance on cued recall and long-term retention tests relative to standard control conditions. A series of laboratory experiments with college undergraduates will be carried out to determine optimal settings of key parameters in the RMF method for undergraduate-level courses (i.e., how many times should an item be correctly recalled and at what intervals across sessions to ensure learning). In Year 3, the researchers will test the RMF method with students enrolled in an Introductory Psychology class. The computer implementation of RMF will be adapted for students to use outside the lab. A parallel set of experiments will be carried out with middle school students in order to determine whether the study technique parameters that support learning of undergraduates are equally effective with 5th–7th grade students.
Control condition
The control conditions vary across each of the experiments and are appropriate to the questions addressed in each experiment, with the RMF group versus the restudy-only and unguided-practice groups at two time points being of greatest interest.
Key measures
Measures are being developed to test students' mastery of the key concepts tested within the content area covered during instruction. Key outcomes will include cued recall performance on criterion tests that occur after 1-month and 3-month retention intervals. Responses on the criterion cued recall tests will be scored by two raters, and credit will be given for verbatim or correctly paraphrased responses. In addition to cued recall performance, savings in relearning will provide additional evidence for comparing the effectiveness of the various study schedules.
Data analytic strategy
For each final test, researchers will conduct a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance, followed by pairwise comparisons of performance in each of the conditions. Self-reported exposure to the key terms outside of the experiment will be included as a covariate in all analyses.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
This project published reports detailing a set of experimental data that identifies the values of RMF parameters needed to obtain durable and efficient learning for middle school students and compare the RMF method to other techniques used to support student learning.
Publications:
Book chapter
Rawson, K. A., and Dunlosky, J. (2013). Retrieval-Monitoring-Feedback (RMF) Technique for Producing Efficient and Durable Student Learning. In R. Azevedo, and V. Aleven (Eds.), Springer International Handbooks of Education (pp. 67-78). New York: Springer Science and Business Media.
Journal article, monograph, or newsletter
Dunlosky, J., and Rawson, K.A. (2012). Overconfidence Produces Underachievement: Inaccurate Self Evaluations Undermine Students' Learning and Retention. Learning and Instruction, 22(4): 271-280.
Grimaldi, P.J., Pyc, M.A., and Rawson, K.A. (2010). Normative Multitrial Recall Performance, Metacognitive Judgments, and Retrieval Latencies for Lithuanian-English Paired Associates. Behavior Research Methods, 42(3): 634-642.
Hartwig, M.K., Rawson, K.A., and Lipko, A.R. (2011). Improving College Students' Evaluation of Text Learning Using Idea-Unit Standards. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(3): 467-484.
Lipko, A.R., Dunlosky, J., Hartwig, M., Rawson, K.A., Swan, K., and Cook, D. (2009). Using Standards to Improve Middle School Students' Accuracy at Evaluating the Quality of Their Recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(4): 307-318.
Pyc, M.A., and Rawson, K.A. (2009). Testing the Retrieval Effort Hypothesis: Does Greater Difficulty Correctly Recalling Information Lead to Higher Levels of Memory?. Journal of Memory and Language, 60(4): 437-447.
Pyc, M.A., and Rawson, K.A. (2011). Costs and Benefits of Dropout Schedules of Test-Restudy Practice: Implications for Student Learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(1): 87-95.
Rawson, K.A., and Dunlosky, J. (2011). Optimizing Schedules of Retrieval Practice for Durable and Efficient Learning: How Much Is Enough?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(3): 283-302.
Rawson, K.A., and Dunlosky, J. (2012). When Is Practice Testing Most Effective for Improving the Durability and Efficiency of Student Learning?. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3): 419-435.
Rawson, K.A., and Dunlosky, J. (2013). Relearning Attenuates the Benefits and Costs of Spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 142(4): 1113-1129.
Wissman, K.T., Rawson, K.A., and Pyc, M.A. (2011). The Interim Test Effect: Testing Prior Material can Facilitate the Learning of New Material. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18(6): 1140-1147.
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Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
