Applying the Science of Learning to Classroom Teaching: The Critical Importance of Aligning Learning with Testing

Abstract

Assessment presents a perennial challenge for both faculty and their students. To excel on a test, students must engage in a series of complex cognitive tasks they rarely practice. To effectively measure student learning, faculty must design summative assessments to target specific knowledge and skill. Unfortunately, despite knowing and understanding the subject matter at a deep level, assessment design and test taking can go often awry for instructors and their students. It is curious that while assessment is one of the most dominant features of education at all levels, learners and their professors seldom receive direct instruction or training on research-based strategies that are proven to radically improve classroom testing. A consequence of the lack of adoption of research-based strategies for test taking and design is a misalignment between student learning and testing that has implications for the integrity of the educational process in our classrooms. The purpose of this essay is to address the misalignment between summative testing and learning and to offer recommendations for better teaching, learning, and testing. While we address classroom summative assessment only, the strategies we recommend are applicable across a variety of testing contexts, including high-stakes, standardized testing. In Part I, we analyze how testing and learning work, and offer retrieval-enhanced learning theory as a bridge to the gap in misalignment between learning and testing. In Part II, we offer four practical recommendations for introducing retrieval-enhanced learning in classroom teaching. We conclude with implications for practice when student learning and testing are aligned.

Effective test-taking requires effective learning, the encoding of content knowledge or procedural skill, and its requisite storage in long-term memory (Karpicke, 2016). It also involves successful retrieval and application of that knowledge and skill in a testing environment. Faculty construct tests as a means of evaluating students’ content knowledge, understanding, and procedural skill. However, tests also involve a series of cognitive tasks (see Table 1) that must proceed without a glitch for students to succeed on a test. Many of these tasks are unrelated to the depth of students’ subject-matter knowledge or expertise. For example, the amount of space available in a student's working memory is entirely separate from the amount, and depth of understanding, of content knowledge in their long-term memory. Unfortunately, most students do not practice with enough frequency the key cognitive tasks involved in testing during self-directed learning or study (Karpicke et al., 2009). Rather, students spend the majority of their time out of the classroom engaging in rehearsal (Bransford et al., 2000). Concomitantly, while active learning is becoming increasingly popular in higher education, classroom instruction still primarily features passive learning through listening to lectures and note-taking. Reading, review, listening, and note-taking are cognitive tasks that encourage lower-order cognitive skills, such as retention and comprehension of knowledge. Though lower order, these tasks are vital to the successful encoding required for initial learning. However, tests rarely assess students’ abilities to listen, re-read, highlight, or take notes. The misalignment between learning and testing results when students focus the majority of their learning on rehearsal, rather than the series of cognitive tasks they will be required to engage in during testing, puts the integrity of the educational process of assessment at risk. Incorporating retrieval-enhanced learning theory into classroom practice has implications for student learning and teaching. Examples of ways to help bridge the gap between testing and learning include: 1) Providing direct instruction to students on the misalignment between frequent approaches to learning during class time, including a description of retrieval and its importance in the syllabus, and 2) Employing research-based strategies that help students practice the cognitive tasks engaged in testing in and out of class. Using retrieval-enhanced learning theory as a fundamental part of your teaching craft offers a powerful way to align testing and learning and to answer the enduring question, how do I authentically measure if my students are genuinely learning anything?