Retrieving Essential Material at the End of Lectures Improves Performance on Statistics Exams

Abstract

At the end of each lecture in a statistics for psychology course, students answered a small set of questions that required them to retrieve information from the same day’s lecture. These exercises constituted retrieval practice for lecture material subsequently tested on four exams throughout the course. This technique is called the PUREMEM (pronounced “pure mem”) procedure for Pure Memory or Practicing Unassisted Retrieval to Enhance Memory for Essential Material. Exam scores were significantly and substantially higher in a section of the course taught with the PUREMEM procedure than one taught without it. Students liked the procedure and believed it increased learning via several different mechanisms.