Retrieval practice occurring during test preparation can greatly enhance retention of information required to perform real-world job related skills long after test have been taken. Practice testing builds mental durability allowing professionals to be able to actively retrieve information with greater efficiency in the performance of task that require organized information and a coherent knowledge base. Studies prove that students learn more when they study after taking a test or quiz than if they had not taken a testing episode.
Taking Practice Test permits students to assess what they know and what they don’t know, so that they can concentrate study efforts on areas in which their knowledge is deficient.
When Students take a test and then restudy material, they learn more from the presentation than they would without taking a test. This outcome is called test-potentiated learning. receiving immediate feedback after taking a test prep allows students to learn material faster and retain information longer.
Retrieving information in a testing environment forces students to organize information more than just reading a chapter out of a book. By actively recalling material, they are most likely to notice important details and weave them into a cohesive structure.
Retrieval Testing can be flexibly used to solve new problems. Studies show that retrieval practice improves transfer of knowledge to new context.
It is unrealistic to test students on everything. Taking a test however, can also produce retrieval-induced facilitation – a phenomenon that shows testing also improves retention of non-tested but related material.
Testing permits students to have a better calibration of their knowledge. The better students are at differentiating what they know and don’t know, the better they will be at acquiring new and more difficult material and studying efficiently.
Research has shown that when test are inserted between study episodes, they cause a release from proactive interference and enable new learning to be more successful.
The feedback from practice test helps identify about what you know and don’t know, allowing the tester to shore up areas that might otherwise prevent them from passing the exam.
Test preparation can also motivate students in alerting them to what they know, and more importantly what they don’t. This, in turn, can lead to decisions on how to allocate study time. the relationship between what a student initially learns, their metacognitive judgments of what they think they know, and how they choose to study have a complex relationship with actual test performance.