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In spite of considerable research about the poor retention rate of undergraduate engineering students, we still have an inadequate understanding of the factors that affect students' decisions to remain in engineering programs and their ability to perform well enough to be retained. Although continued study is needed of external factors such as curricular requirements, admissions criteria, and test scores, we also need to know much more about the relationships between curricular experiences and students' learning styles, habits, and attitudes. The work presented in this paper was designed to enhance educators' understanding of the factors that underlie the concern about student retention in engineering. By observing 1,000 engineering students during their first three years in college, the research team generated a large database on the students' academic and non‐academic characteristics as well as their successes and failures. The traits discovered not only support many findings from previous studies but also reveal some new relationships that could prove essential to designing an educational environment that will prepare engineers for success in the future.

Reports 2 experiments concerned with the effects of headings, both embedded and intact (outline), on the processing of complex text material. Results of Exp I with 132 undergraduates indicate that embedded headings reliably improved delayed test performance. In Exp II with 106 Ss, it was further found that instructions in the use of headings as processing aids facilitated test performance. A discrepancy, however, was observed between the 2 experiments in that the presentation of headings without instructions failed to increase test scores significantly on the dependent measures of Exp II. Sensitization to the headings is proposed as one possible explanation for the results. (34 ref)

The dyadic cooperative learning situation was examined by analyzing the impact of specific roles and activities on each member of the dyad. In learning scientific text passages, one member of the cooperating pair served as a recaller/ oral summarizer and the other pair member served as either an active or passive listener/facilitator. Members of some treatment conditions alternated recaller and listener roles, while those in other conditions had fixed roles. Serving as a no-treatment control, students in one group used their own study techniques. The results indicated that both roles (fixed vs. alternating) and listener activities (active vs. passive) are important variables in cooperative learning. On free recall of text main ideas, fixed recallers outperformed fixed listeners, and pairs incorporating an active listener outperformed those that did not. Certain combinations of role and listener activity resulted in better performance than that achieved by individuals using their own study methods. Additionally, persons who alternated recaller/listener roles subjectively evaluated the cooperative learning experience more positively than the cooperative groups.There has been a growing interest i n the potential of students interacting with one another t o improve their acquisition of academic knowledge a n d skills.Requests for reprints should be sent to Joni E. Spurlin, Academic Support Services, Room 156, Gail Borden Building, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77550. Downloaded by [University of Glasgow] at 04:37 22 December 2014 452 SPURLIN, DANSEREAU, LARSON, BROOKSThe interaction among students based on equal partnership in the learning experience, as opposed to fixed teacher/learner or tutor/tutee roles, has been termed cooperative learning. Students cooperatively studying textbook material in dyads (pairs) have been shown to perform better on delayed recall and recognition measures than students studying individually McDonald, Larson, Dansereau, & Spurlin, 1983). Although often indicating positive results (McDonald et al., 1983;Sharan, 1980;Slavin, 1980), the prior studies on cooperative learning have not attempted to examine critical dimensions of the experience systematically, for example, interaction and processing strategies, and individual differences. The present study was designed to be a first step in remedying some of the drawbacks of prior cooperative learning studies by systematically analyzing the effects of learning (interaction) strategies on the acquisition of scientific knowledge in the context of a dyadic learning situation.A study by McDonald et al. (1983) provides the basis for the present research. In the McDonald et al. study, an individual text learning strategy developed by was modified for use in dyadic learning. This strategy required the student pairs to read approximately 500 words of a 2,500-word passage. One student then served as recaller and attempted to orally summarize from memory what had been learned. The other member of the pair served as ...

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