Retrieval practice: why asking questions can work better than re-reading
Retrieval practice: why asking questions can work better than re-reading
You had an employee attend a training and want the knowledge to stick. What do you do? Send the presentation again? Email a PDF? Or ask a few questions? The latter can be surprisingly powerful.
What is retrieval practice?
Retrieval practice means someone tries to actively pull information from memory. So not re-viewing information, but trying to recall it themselves. The difference between reading that 'the three steps are A, B, and C' and answering the question 'what are the three steps?' seems small, but with that second form, memory actually has to do the work.
Why is that interesting?
When someone tries to retrieve knowledge, they also discover what they still know and what they do not. Say: when asked which three steps you follow for procedure X, you still know A and B, but not C anymore. That is valuable information: you have not just made a mistake, you have discovered a knowledge gap.
Retrieval practice is not a regular test
An important difference lies in the purpose. A test is often meant to grade. Retrieval practice is mainly meant to help someone learn. A question can therefore easily be followed by 'the correct answer is C, here's why'. The mistake becomes part of the learning process instead of a grading moment.
An example in a safety training
Say employees have completed a safety training. A week later, they get the question: you see a colleague skip a safety procedure, what do you do? The employee picks an answer, then gets feedback. A week later, a similar scenario returns, and the employee has to retrieve the knowledge again. This creates multiple moments where the same knowledge is actively used, spread over time, see also why spacing matters so much.
Retrieval practice versus re-reading
Re-reading is passive, focuses on recognition, takes little effort, and reveals little about knowledge gaps. Retrieval practice is active, focuses on recall, requires more cognitive effort, and makes knowledge gaps visible. That doesn't mean reading is useless: information naturally has to be learned first. But for maintaining knowledge, active retrieval plays an important role, and research on retrieval practice supports its use as a learning strategy.
A good question doesn't have to be hard, but it has to be relevant. 'What was on page 17 of the presentation?' is a weak question. 'What are the three most important steps of procedure X?' is better. And 'you encounter situation X, what do you do first, and why?' is better still, because that shifts you from reproducing information to applying knowledge.
Use different question types
Vary between factual questions ('what is X?'), recall questions ('which three steps do you know?'), application questions ('what do you do in this situation?'), decision questions ('which option do you choose?'), and reflection questions ('which mistake happens most often in your own work environment?'). That variety prevents a retention programme from being nothing but simple multiple-choice questions.
Retrieval practice for training providers
A training provider could, for example, offer a set of twelve weekly questions after every training: basic knowledge in week 1, a procedure in week 2, a scenario in week 3, application in week 4, a harder question in week 5, a practical case in week 6, and so on. After twelve weeks, the trainee has not retaken a full training, but the key knowledge has been reactivated twelve times. This is exactly the mechanism behind Stiqqo's weekly knowledge activation.
An important nuance
Retrieval practice doesn't mean constantly testing every employee. The goal is not more testing, the goal is more active learning. A good question can therefore be part of a short learning activity, without the employee feeling like they have to sit an exam again.
Conclusion
If you want to know whether someone still remembers something, ask them. But if you want to help someone keep remembering it, asking good questions is itself part of the learning process. That makes retrieval practice particularly interesting for knowledge retention: not telling someone again what they need to know, but having them try to retrieve it themselves. That is exactly where knowledge retention begins.