(Julia Shuck is a student intern at The Xplanation, writing a regular column on education and working behind the scenes in our research department
It’s finals week. Well, sort of. There’s this concept of a finals week but the week that really tends to bite one in the butt is the week before finals. During that last week of classes every professor decides that the paper or class project assigned should be due, presentations should be made, some decide to be “nice” and instead of issuing a final exam they give a test during that last week- not to mention one still has to go to classes everyday.
Then there’s finals week- students basically have all day everyday to study for an exam. But it doesn’t always work out that way. More often than not we still have papers to write, off campus jobs to work at and friends to hang out with. So what we end up doing is waiting until the last minute and cramming- relying on our short-term memory, caffeine and luck. By the time one hits their senior year, procrastination becomes more of a skill in itself than a flaw.
But this idea of binging and purging of information, relying on short term memory and then not being able to recall them information two weeks later, isn’t real learning or a true gauge of how much students have learned or obtained- it measures how much we have managed to cram in our minds and regurgitate at a professor’s command. I had an exam last Friday, today 5 days later, I still remember general ideas, as for specifics- not so much. Same class only for the midterm exam- I’m having trouble remembering what material was even covered, and when I do remember I remember the BIG ideas and key terms that I once could write an essay on- now I can give a brief description with little to no detail. Granted, if I were to look over it again it would probably “come back” to me, but how many students keep their notes and textbooks to look back on later in life as a refresher? (Okay, I do but that’s because it’s generally just as cost effective to keep my textbooks AND I like my classes/textbooks for the most part and feel I can/will reference them in the future- I’m obviously not just a minority in this sense but a real rarity!)
So for true sustained learning- I think it’s safe to say this study method of short term memory binge and purge, doesn’t actually accomplish the goals universities have for their students- or at least I hope not.
Yet, instead of offering students methods of sustained learning such as small group dialogues, reading a journal article of their choice on a topic, making a visual or interactive representation of the material- we will instead keep the library open until 2 a.m., have a Sunday pancake dinner from 9 p.m. to midnight and offer students additional ways to pull all-nighters during finals week. I envy the students that can pull an all-nighter because without at least 6.5 hours of sleep a night (8 preferred), I’m worthless. Universities could emphasize studying earlier or better the first time so information is more easily retained, reiterate that eating properly and getting plenty of sleep helps one concentrate or even have a concept of dropping a final exam in which students aren’t going to remember the information two weeks from now and devise another way for students to show you what they’ve learned.
(Personally, I like big papers- I still remember the paper I wrote about New Zealand deer farms in my English Composition 1000 class my freshman year of college. I think having to actually take information, apply it to the real world and use critical analysis helps me to remember the material. My freshman year, I also remember writing a group paper for my history class on Al Capone- and the things I remember from that! Did you know that at the end of his life, when Capone breathed he made a whistling noise because he had a perforated septum caused by snorting too much cocaine? OR that he had a God-complex and legitimately thought he was God and angels spoke to him, especially while he was in jail? And that he liked fishing his last months on earth- even though he wasn’t with it enough to remember whom his closest gang members from the past were? I can’t tell you the details of nirvana yet I remember that Al Capone liked to fish?? Ya, I think I get more out of research and writing papers than taking a midterm- just saying.)
Don’t take my word for it though, within 5 minutes of searching (including pulling up my university’s library website) I was able to find a research paper by Peladeau, Forget and Gagne, on the effect of paced and unpaced practice on skill application and retention the results showed:
“College students enrolled in introductory quantitative methods classes were asked to practice every week with a computerized flashcard program until they attained various mastery criteria. The results confirmed that practicing until mastery improved individual exam scores, group success rates, and long-term retention.”