Here's an article about a study that alleges to show that challenging students, and forcing them to try to answer questions before teaching them how to do them. That sounds exactly like the structure we use for our textbooks and classes.
One of my favorite excerpts from the article is this:
Quote:
Students might consider taking the questions in the back of the textbook chapter and try to answer them before reading the chapter. (If there are no questions, convert the section headings to questions. If the heading is Pavlovian Conditioning, ask yourself What is Pavlovian conditioning?). Then read the chapter and answer the questions while reading it. When the chapter is finished, go back to the questions and try answering them again. For any you miss, restudy that section of the chapter. Then wait a few days and try to answer the questions again (restudying when you need to). Keep this practice up on all the chapters you read before the exam and you will be have learned the material in a durable manner and be able to retrieve it long after you have left the course.
This is very close to a comment I put on a great many of the Challenge Sets I review -- go after a problem, fail, study it and its solution (and think about how you should have gotten to the solution without looking at it), wait a week or two, and then try again.
Special thanks to AoPSer orl for pointing me at this
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