INVESTIGATING REPEATABLE NUDGE EFFECTS WITH SPACED REPETITION IN USING MCQs

Year
2020
Pages
Volume 2, pp.318-327
Abstract

The contemporary learner's learning habit is very different now due to their exposure to new technology at a young age. They have a lot on their proverbial plates; by having too many things on one's mind made them easily distracted and unable to retain the information. This led to "binge and purge" learning, a common practice whereby learners cram for an assessment by consuming subject matter in a large lump (binge) and then spitting it back in the assessment (purge). Due to their proverbial plates being full, this led to learners favoring "binge and purge" learning to achieve academic results, but not the knowledge and skills needed for the future. A constant nudging to learners to revise and test their knowledge throughout lessons could be more appropriate in evaluating these contemporary learner's academic achievement. In this paper, an initial study was carried out with weekly e-quizzes to "nudge" learners to study, and to find the optimal number of questions to be repeated from their previous lesson. The intention of these spaced repetition learning was to enhance learners' knowledge retention of key concepts. The optimal number of questions, as defined in our study, was the number of cumulative repeated questions that would help learners to retain key concepts but would not overwhelm learners with too many questions. A subsequent study was then conducted to validate the findings and its scalability with different groups of learners learning different aspects of networking concepts. The paper ends with a discussion on the effect of spaced repetition on learners' motivation and performance in learning data communication and networking by using the data gathered from the MUSIC Model of Motivation survey and learners' average scores in e-quizzes respectively.

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