Practice Makes Perfect

June 5, 2025

While lectures are often considered a key element in teaching, research from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science demonstrates that doing practice problems with feedback can help students learn better and faster — which could lead to more opportunities for students in the future.

In "Practice With Feedback vs. Lecture: Consequences for Learning, Efficiency and Motivation," researchers from SCS's Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and Athabasca University investigated if students need both lecture and practice to succeed, or if eliminating one method could lead to more efficient learning. They also examined how different instruction methods impacted motivation.

In a series of three experiments, researchers found that replacing lectures with practice problems and immediate feedback helped students learn faster. The findings challenge assumptions about the necessity of lectures in science and math education.

"It's in the language that people sometimes use," said Ken Koedinger, the Hillman Professor of Computer Science and director of the HCII's LearnLab. "They say, 'I learn from the lecture — the practice just shows whether or not I have learned.' So to some students and educators, it just seems unreasonable or impossible to leave the lecture out. But we thought we'd try it and see what happened."

For one part of the study, participants learned skills and concepts in statistics via lecture, completing practice problems with real-time feedback, or a combination of the two methods. After the learning sessions, participants took a test and filled out a survey about the experience. Researchers found that students in the group that did practice problems with feedback learned as well or better in substantially less time than the lecture-only participants. In fact, their learning output per time spent was three times more efficient than their peers in the lecture group.

Ultimately, the researchers found that students who received the combined lecture and practice performed best on the posttest. But students in the practice-only group learned more efficiently. The team noted that learning efficiency matters because it allows students to cover more ground in one course, possibly allowing them to complete college more quickly and opening the door to other opportunities.

Paulo Carvalho, an assistant professor in the HCII, said opting for practice with feedback also means students can determine what they don't know more quickly.

"Practice with feedback makes you face the truth of how much you do or do not know in a way that lecture does not," Carvalho said. "A student can sit through a lecture, not understand anything effectively, but feel like they did. They might think, 'The teacher is engaging and I'm excited.' They get out of the lecture, assuming they understand, but when they go to do homework, it becomes clear that they don't understand. Practice immediately brings understanding to bear."

Technology offers students new ways to incorporate practice with feedback. In current coursework, students might attend a lecture and complete homework independently. With online learning platforms, students can access the same fundamental informational content through practice problems they receive in a lecture, and when they get something wrong — highlighting a gap in understanding — there can be immediate feedback.

Ultimately, researchers want to understand how to help students learn more efficiently and effectively. And while practice with feedback outperformed lecture-only instruction, less confident students can find this type of learning demotivating. HCII Project Scientist Michael Asher said researchers can adapt motivating aspects of lectures into practice with feedback.

"Some of my past work shows that if an instructor giving a lecture talks about how something is relevant and useful in a student's life, it's going to make the student want to pursue that topic more in the future," Asher said. "I don't think there's anything incompatible about practice with those elements. Students could do practice problems that are extremely relevant to their interests with feedback that highlights the relevance. I think technology provides the opportunity to do this at scale."

Researchers plan to expand on this work by studying how practice with feedback can better support student motivation. For more on their research, visit the LearnLab website.

For More Information
Aaron Aupperlee | 412-268-9068 | aaupperlee@cmu.edu