Effects of Training Schedule and Equipment Variety on Retention and Transfer of Maintenance Skill

Abstract
To help guide training course revision efforts of the United States Army Ordnance Center and School (USAOCS), the present experiment examined the effects of training schedule and equipment variety on maintenance task retention and transfer. The experiment contained a training and a testing segment. During training, four groups of 15 student Fuel and Electrical Repairers, 63G Military Occupational Specialty (MOST), performed the task of testing charging system electrical output. Each group performed three task repetitions under one of four training conditions formed by the factorial combination of two training schedules (massed, spaced) and two levels of equipment variety (present, absent) . Massed scheduling allowed no rest pauses between successive task repetitions; spaced scheduling allowed one-day rest pauses between repetitions. Testing included two retention tests and one transfer test. The first retention test occurred immediately after training, while the second occurred an average of 14 days later. The transfer test was given immediately after the delayed retention test. Retention test performance was faster and more accurate after spaced than after massed training. Only the massed schedule groups showed significant (p . 05) retention losses between immediate and delayed testing. Thus, the best transfer resulted when training task repetitions were spaced and performed on different equipment. It was concluded that: (a) spacing of task repetitions during training is an effective way to improve both retention and transfer of maintenance skill; and that (b) added transfer improvements can be obtained by coupling spaced task repetitions with increased equipment variety during training.

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