Testing Is More Desirable When It Is Adaptive and Still Desirable When Compared to Note-Taking

Abstract

Testing is a well-established desirable difficulty. Yet there are still some open issues regarding the benefits of testing that need to be addressed. First, the possibility to increase its benefits by adapting the sequence of test questions to the learners' level of knowledge has scarcely been explored. In view of theories that emphasize the benefits of adapting learning tasks to learner knowledge, it is reasonable to assume that the common practice of providing all learners with the same test questions is not optimal. Second, it is an open question as to whether the testing effect prevails if stronger control conditions than the typical restudy condition are used. We addressed these issues in an experiment with N = 200 university students who were randomly assigned to (a) adaptive testing, (b) non-adaptive testing, or note-taking (c) without or (d) with focus guidance. In an initial study phase, all participants watched an e-lecture. Afterward, they processed its content according to their assigned conditions. One week later, all learners took a posttest. As main results, we found that adaptive testing yielded higher learning outcomes than non-adaptive testing. These benefits were mediated by the adaptive learners' higher testing performance and lower perceived cognitive demand during testing. Furthermore, we found that both testing groups outperformed the note-taking groups. Jointly, our results show that the benefits of testing can be enhanced by adapting the sequence of test questions to learners' knowledge and that testing can be more effective than note-taking.

Keywords: adaptivity; desirable difficulties; focusing; note-taking; test-based learning; testing.

FIGURE 1

Feedback mask as used during the learning phase of the testing conditions (translated from German).

FIGURE 2

Sample slides as used in the e-lecture during the initial study phase and during the learning phase of the note-taking conditions (translated from German). (A) Slide showing tested content as seen by the focused note-taking group (with a frame). (B) The same slide as seen by the note-taking group (without a frame). (C) Slide showing untested content as seen in the learning phase of both the note-taking and focused note-taking conditions.