Are we doing homework wrong? The marginal effect of homework using spaced repetition

Abstract

While assigning homework in college courses is supported by both psychological research on memory and studies of economics classes, research examining the marginal effect of homework scores on exam performance generally shows insignificant results. These weak marginal effects may be due to the number of times students repeat the work and how spread out they are; the few studies that show positive marginal effects of homework performance use at least three spaced repetitions. This study evaluates a spaced repetition model of short homework assignments repeated at increasing intervals in intermediate microeconomics. Results show a positive significant marginal effect; students who did better on the homework assignments scored higher on both in class exams and a cumulative final. The implication is that the simple change of structuring homework assignments with additional spaced repetitions may significantly improve learning.