The “testing effect” is often promoted by scientist as a golden trick to improve learning (e.g chap2 of the book make it stick, and part8 of the dunlosky & al. 2013). A large amont of studies support the idea that testing yourself is superior to restudy to strenghen memories. The effect is big and robust accross many kind of learning content and context. For teachers, this can be implemtented in the classroom by using quizzes and it has provided good results. I let this aside as I am more interested in the student perspective of this approach.
If you are using anki or any SRS you already take advantage of the testing effect. However, cued recall of facts (as in anki) is not the only recall mode that you can use. One other recall mode, that I would like to discuss here, is free recall. The idea is to recall as much content as you can concerning a specific subject you are trying to learn. Some studies support the idea that this mode of recall provide stronger outcomes than other kind of recall. Dunlosky & al. 2013 :
Free recall is the first learning technique I learned, and I used it extensively during one year of intensive learning class (we have a specific kind of curriculum in France called “classes prepa” which is very demanding and competitive). This was 9 years ago. At that time I did not know any other technique and was unaware of the body of scientific litterature promoting this approach because the book I bought promoting this technique never mentionned it. Anyway, I registered a huge improvement the year I implemented this technique. Many other factors could explain this, but I still think that it played an important role.
The goal of this post was to first share this experience, as this technique does not seem to be well known compared to its usefullness. Secondly, I was wondering if any of you are using this approach either as a standalone technique or mixed with other techniques. For example this recent interesting post do implement the free recall technique. If you have anything to share to feed this thread about “free recall”, It would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your interest !
The paragraph quoted does not really explain what free recall is. As I wrote, “the idea is to recall as much content as you can concerning a specific subject you are trying to learn.”. Now I realise that it was not precise enough, thanks for asking for elaboration.
For example, if after having watched an instructive video on youtube, you get yourself into the act of recalling as many things as possible that was presented in this video, mentally or by scribling some notes, this is a free recall. It’s free as in “free style”, you have no cue to quizz yourself on the content you are learning.
Hello Bruno! You may not know this but you were the first person to comment on my very first question so I would like to thank you for a great answer and give you a great answer in return!
Regarding your question, I have personally used the free recall method to study and deepen my recall of material for college (in the U.S.) and for personal learning. This method of self-testing is very good for a number of reasons:
1 it is very easy to create practice questions/tests.
2 it is effective for improving recall of information (it is active rather than passive recall) as supported by numerous scientific studies.
3 it is very easy to implement without much preparation or training.
While it is a very useful technique it does have some shortcomings, the largest of them is the lack of feedback mechanism. This becomes dangerous when you get a sense of having explained the topic fully but have missed an important facet or section. Alongside the danger of forgetting there have been many studies (unfortunately I don’t have any on hand) that found a strong relationship between improved memory and immediate (within a day of the test) feedback on correct and incorrect answers. The free recall method does not have any built in feedback. This is a problem, albeit an easy to fix one, that should be noted. Another problem is that the free recall method can become very time consuming, depending on the amount of information that is being tested/recalled, compared to other forms of self testing (fill in the blank, multiple choice, etc,) that could become more effective if coupled with spaced repetition. Something else to note is I personally separate what Venant describes and free recall because you aren’t required to elaborate on the material, only remember the words. What Venant is describing, from what I can gather I could be wholly wrong lol, I have always called the “Feynman technique”. The Feynman technique, named after the famous physicist, requires one to explain the material as if you are teaching someone else by creating examples, analogies, and using one’s own words, I differentiate the two here because what you describe does not explicitly say to do this and I learned the techniques separately. That said combining the Feynman technique with free recall is very effective at both deepening one’s understanding of the material as well as the ability to recall the material.
All in all I would say the only unmitigated flaw with the free recall technique is the time factor, it can take a lot of time to either write out or physically explain a complex subject.
Gosh, It’s been 3 months already that I started this thread…
I prepared an answer which I never sent, for no reason that I can remember. But that’s what digital notekeepers are for me, reviving surprising things from the past.
Vagrant, thanks for your answer. I see we are on a convergent line here. I second Christian proposition concerning the differenciation of the Feynman technique with free recall. As he wrote, the connection can also be very strong “explain the material as if you are teaching someone else” can be paired with an active act of recalling, which sounds promising. The balance between self-explanation and recall may be adjusted depending the subject of matter. I believe Maths and Physics learning can be helped a lot by the Feynman technique even for content that is so fresh that it does not give much difficulties to recall. For less comprehension-demanding subjects (like language learning) spending time to just simply recall information makes generally more sense than explaining this content to yourself.
Christian, you did not lie by saying that you were providing a great answer. Thank you very much ! I appreciate a lot the fact that you spent time with this technique and went with these thoughts. I agree a lot that the absence of built-in feedback is a problem. No problem for not having the reference at hand, this is indeed an important factor. If I remembered well, few words are given about this in the Dunlosky & al. paper. Considering what you pointed out, there are good chances that studies comparing the modalities of tests provided informative feedbacks to students. This would imply that the statement suggesting that the free recall seems better than the others mode could be revised if imprecises feedbacks are used. I did not realized it before. Still, I would like to provide two points to defend the modality of free recall :
Most of the time, the student has its notes somewhere. He can scan them afterwards to see what was missing or incorrect. It certainly takes time, but not that much from what I remember. Maybe, one day, students will have nice “free recall checking software”, let’s hope.
The other modalities of test sounds to me to be fact-based. By being quizzed by your own material of flashcards, you do not strenghen the links between facts of your subject of matter and do not help the student to get the big picture. As these links are (consciously or not) traversed to practice free recall, I would think that they are more strenghen by this learning activity compared to the other modes of recall. My belief, then, is that free recall can provide a deeper knowledge than fact-based quizzes. I feel that mastering the overview of a subject may improve creative performances such as sumarizing, or delivering your knowledge by following a transversal theme. But these are just uninformed opinons after all I would be curious to know whether few of these things have been tested yet.
Just bumped into this post while googling similar topics. Here are my two cents:
I would totally agree that cued-based recall is very ineffective for building a general picture of the body of knowledge. Yes, I can recall the details of a fact, but it does not help me with the big picture. It’s like having all the individual pieces of a large puzzle but they are never connected. I think free recall could help, at least alleviate this problem. It depends on the degree of how “free” your recall is. I suggest limit the amount of free recall, that is, Take the book “Thinking, fast and slow” as an example. Cards like “Free recall: Tell me about the representativeness heuristics” or “What is the representativeness heuristics” and pour out everything you know about it. Then check your answers against that particular part of your notes. Free recalling too much will be too demanding and no way grade your cards.
Another technique is that you can also ask your questions like “How does this relate to the big picture?”, “How can I apply this?” also help connecting your pieces of information together.
After all, Anki is for memorization, not very good for learning and understanding. I suggest mapping, imagining, self-explaining (similar to the Feynman Technique) for learning; Anki for memorization.
I would be curious to know whether few of these things have been tested yet.