by Akshat Rathi, ars technica
Karl Szpunar, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, might have a rather simple solution to rein in distractions, one that focuses attention in real-world classrooms: intersperse pop quizzes into the online lectures. Szpunar got this idea from a 2008 study he conducted. In it, students learned five lists of words; half the students were tested after each list and the other half were tested only after the fifth list. Both groups were then tested on the cumulative list of words. Those tested after every list, not surprisingly, performed better on the cumulative test. But the results also suggested that being continually quizzed helped focus the students on the task at hand. Both groups had the same gap between seeing the fifth set of words and being tested on them, yet the group that was tested along the way performed twice as well on this set. Regular quizzes limit mind-wandering, increase note-taking, and cut exam anxiety.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/testing-students-during-video-lectures-improves-learning/
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