Improving education research and medical training through large-scale experimentation – SIDESLAB

Although learning science has established general effects such as retrieval practice, spacing, and interleaving, which provide rough guidelines for improving learning, exactly how to fine-tune the learning experience in such a way as to optimise long-term memory retention in a real educational setting remains a vast open question. We will use the SIDES digital learning platform, which is used every day by 45000 French medical students to review their courses, train themselves and take their exams as multiple choice questions. Each semester, volunteer students will be randomised into one of many experimental conditions differing in parameters such as difficulty level, feedback, and the specific algorithms used to model memory retention and forgetting, in order to guide optimal scheduling of retrieval practice. The results will feed fundamental research on learning, and will be used to progressively improve SIDES and offer students a more efficient and evidence-based learning experience.