AUTHOR=Belardi Angelo , Pedrett Salome , Rothen Nicolas , Reber Thomas P. 

TITLE=Spacing, Feedback, and Testing Boost Vocabulary Learning in a Web Application

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.757262

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.757262

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Information and communication technology (ICT) becomes more prevalent in education but its general efficacy and that of specific learning applications are not fully established yet. One way to further improve learning applications could be to use insights from fundamental memory research. We here assess whether four established learning principles (spacing, corrective feedback, testing, and multimodality) can be translated into an applied ICT context to facilitate vocabulary learning in a self-developed web application. Effects on the amount of newly learned vocabulary were assessed in a mixed factorial design (3×2×2×2) with the independent variables Spacing (between-subjects; one, two, or four sessions), Feedback (within-subjects; with or without), Testing (within-subjects, 70 or 30% retrieval trials), and Multimodality (within-subjects; unimodal or multimodal). Data from 79 participants revealed significant main effects for Spacing [<italic>F</italic>(2,76) = 8.51, <italic>p</italic> = 0.0005, <inline-formula><mml:math id="INEQ4" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msubsup><mml:mpadded lspace="2.8pt" width="+2.8pt"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">η</mml:mi></mml:mpadded><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msubsup><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.18</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>] and Feedback [<italic>F</italic>(1,76) = 21.38, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.0001, <inline-formula><mml:math id="INEQ6" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msubsup><mml:mpadded lspace="2.8pt" width="+2.8pt"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">η</mml:mi></mml:mpadded><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msubsup><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.22</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>], and a significant interaction between Feedback and Testing [<italic>F</italic>(1,76) = 14.12, <italic>p</italic> = 0.0003, <inline-formula><mml:math id="INEQ9" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msubsup><mml:mpadded lspace="2.8pt" width="+2.8pt"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">η</mml:mi></mml:mpadded><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msubsup><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.16</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>]. Optimal Spacing and the presence of corrective Feedback in combination with Testing together boost learning by 29% as compared to non-optimal realizations (massed learning, testing with the lack of corrective feedback). Our findings indicate that established learning principles derived from basic memory research can successfully be implemented in web applications to optimize vocabulary learning.</p>