Self‐testing as a learning motivator

Discovery learning, says Michael Toye, is a method of ensuring that you get the information you require when you are ready for it. If this is so, it is not difficult to see why the method proves so successful with problem groups — that is with people who, for a variety of reasons, are not at the ready when the traditional instructor might think that they were. Older trainees, for example, take longer to understand instructions or to get geared to what a lecturer is saying. They also tend to switch off from a lecture when they hear a point of particular interest, while they relate it to their own personal experience. They switch on again later, perhaps having missed some vital information. Discovery learning copes with these problems by having the information available when the learners are sufficiently alert to benefit from it.