Testing Encourages Transfer Between Factual and Application Questions in an Online Learning Environment

Quizzing improves retention compared to additional study opportunities, a phenomenon known as test-enhanced learning. Two experiments investigated whether the type of question at quiz improves retention for factual and applied course material on exams in an online college course. Students were given quizzes with either factual questions or questions designed to encourage application of a particular concept. As expected, quizzing with feedback improved exam performance compared to material that had not been quizzed. Further, the benefits of quizzing transferred to different question types. Performance on application exam questions improved if students were quizzed with factual questions. Likewise, performance on factual exam questions improved if students were quizzed with application questions. These results replicate the finding that quizzing benefits retention in an online learning environment and, more importantly, that the benefits of quizzing transfer to exam questions that differ in type from the quiz question. General Audience Summary Extensive prior research suggests that quizzing experience in which students actively retrieve answers to questions bolsters their memory for the quizzed content more than restudying or simply reviewing the quizzed material. In the current experiments, we explored the utility of online quizzing with feedback for improving performance on later exam questions that test the same concepts but in a different format, both in the response type (short-answer vs. multiple-choice) and the level of knowledge (factual vs. application of fact) required to answer the question. In two experiments, college students enrolled in an online neuroscience course were given quizzes with either factual questions or questions designed to encourage application of a particular concept, followed by an exam with factual and application questions on the concepts covered in the quizzes. Compared to concepts that were not covered on prior quizzes, students accurately answered more factual and application exam questions when they had previously answered quiz questions on the same concepts, regardless of whether those quiz questions were the same question type (i.e., both factual questions) or different question types (e.g., quizzed with factual question followed by an application exam question on the same concept). These results replicate the finding that quizzing benefits retention in an online learning environment and, more importantly, that the ben