How can I convince my students not to cram?

Dear Aggie,

My first exam is coming up, and I am trying to convince my students to study "smart" and not cram the night before. On the other hand, students often do just fine after an all-night cram session. How can I convince them to try something different? Or do I even need to if cramming seems to be working for them?

~Stop the Cram

Dear Stop,

Your question actually raises several great points to unpack, but the overarching theme is testing (or "retrieval practice"), as well as how that testing is spaced throughout the semester. In order to promote long-term learning and retention, students need to practice retrieving the course material. And a great way to do this is to test! Students can self-test as a study strategy, and we can design our courses to provide lots of opportunities for testing as learning (not just evaluation). A lot of this information has been nicely summarized by James Lang, in his book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass), and is supported by laboratory and classroom research (see selected resources below).

What students can do (and how you can help them)

You are correct that cramming will not help students with long-term retention (see below). Neither will re-reading their notes or the textbook. These kinds of activities create an “illusion of knowledge”; students are familiar with the material, but they haven’t mastered it in a meaningful way. In order to get to this level of mastery, they need to practice (retrieval practice). The following activities have been shown to help students. Similarly, if you tell students why these approaches are effective, and show them data about the impact of these practices, they may be more likely to try them:

• Test yourself; write your own test, or work with classmates to write a practice test, then take it.
• With books and notes closed, write down all the key concepts from a particular lecture or module, then go back to your notes and check yourself.
• Flash cards are a good way to self-test.
• If there are end-of-chapter questions in your textbook, try and answer them without looking at the rest of the chapter or your notes.
• If there is a practice test built into the course, take it!
• Do all of this frequently and regularly, not just right before a due date.

What you can do: Course Design

In terms of our course design, not only can we provide opportunities for practice (retrieval practice), but we can provide them frequently—to address something known as "spacing"—literally spreading, or spacing, out exposure to the material over time. Repeated exposures are much more effective than one big "massed" session in terms of long-lasting learning. This is why cramming may allow a student to be successful on a midterm, but won't help them on a cumulative final or in future coursework that relies on the groundwork laid in your course.

Here are some ways to build in spaced retrieval practice to your course:

• Have frequent low, or no-stakes quizzes. Weekly is great!
• Even converting two large exams to four to six more moderate ones will enhance durable learning (more testing as a learning tool; spacing out the learning).
• Build in practice tests or quizzes. If  you use large question banks to develop quizzes, you could reopen quizzes (for no points) before an exam, so that students can go back and redo quizzes (seeing new questions). Or you could develop a (no-points) practice exam for students to take before each actual exam.
• Have a cumulative component to each exam or assignment (and let students know up-front that you will do so). This means that students will have to re-visit prior topics repeatedly, learning them more deeply.

At this point in the semester, you may want to focus on helping students develop their own spaced retrieval practices. But in the future, perhaps you can design your course to build in those opportunities for students.

~Aggie

Resources:

Carvalho, P.F., Sana, F. and Yan, V.X. 2020. Self-regulated spacing in a massive open online course is related to better learning. NPJ Science of Learning, 5(1), 1-7.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-0061-1 

Lang, J. Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. 2016. Jossey-Bass.

Stanger-Hall, K.F., Shockley, F.W. and Wilson, R.E. 2011. Teaching Students How to Study: A Workshop on Information Processing and Self-Testing Helps Students Learn. CBE-LSE (10):187-198. DOI: 10.1187/cbe.10-11-0142.
https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.10-11-0142

Walck-Shannon, E.M., Cahill, M.J., McDaniel, M.A. and Frey, R.F. 2019. Participation in Voluntary Re-quizzing is Predictive of Increased Performance on Cumulative Assessments in Introductory Biology. CBE-LSE 18:ar15,1. DOI: 10.1187/cbe.18-08-0163.
https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.18-08-0163

UCSD Spaced Practice (for Students)
https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/effective-studying/spaced-practice.html

UCSD Retrieval Practice (for Students)
https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/effective-studying/retrieval-practice.html