Summarize, Synthesize, and Space: The Relative Effects of Organization, Repetition, and Spacing on Student Performance

The effectiveness of using instructor- and student-generated course summaries and a related synthesis task was considered in experiments involving 290 undergraduate students in four principles of marketing classes. Students were exposed to one of four conditions: control, instructor-provided course summaries, student-generated course summaries, and student-generated course summaries plus a synthesis task pertaining to the target materials. Student performance on the comprehensive multiple-choice and long answer final examination was significantly different in the conditions, and the student-generated summaries plus synthesis task condition showed the most significant positive effect on student examination performance. Implications for teaching strategies are discussed.