CDLA · Module 2 — Learning science for digital media

Retrieval beats rereading

Roediger & Karpicke (2006): a recall test outperforms restudy on delayed retention. Do not invent 24-hour forgetting percentages.

About 16 min

Practice in the lesson player

Sorting, matching, quizzes, and the module gate stay behind a free account so scored answers are not public. The teaching notes below are the same cited curriculum.

What this lesson covers

  1. 01

    What the 2006 paper actually showed

    Roediger and Karpicke had students either restudy a prose passage or take a free-recall test. On an immediate test, restudy can look as good or better. After two days and after a week, testing produced better retention — the testing effect. This academy will not quote a “70% forgotten in 24 hours” line; that figure is not from this paper and is usually a distortion of older memory research.

  2. 02

    Restudy vs. retrieval in a course

    Looks busy, weak later: Click-through recap of the same slides. · Highlighting a PDF of the policy. · Watching the procedure video again “for confidence.”

    Looks harder, stronger later: Close the notes and reconstruct the five steps. · A delayed scenario that uses yesterday’s rule. · Generate the error code from the symptom, then check.