Knowledge Taught in School: What Is Remembered?

Semb, George; Ellis, John A.

doi:10.2307/1170695

Cited by 49 publications

(75 citation statements)

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“…This would cause the subject matter of the statistics courses to recur regularly. It has been shown that without a periodic recurrence of the subject matter, the relations between concepts will fade and conceptual understanding will decline (Conway et al 1991(Conway et al , 1992Neisser 1984;Semb and Ellis 1994). Future research is needed to study if and how this can be implemented and whether such an approach would lead to the anticipated positive effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of distributed practice on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics

et al. 2010

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In this study the effect of the reduced distribution of study activities on students' conceptual understanding of statistics is investigated in a quasi-experiment. Conceptual understanding depends on coherent and error free knowledge structures. Students need time to construct such knowledge structures. A curriculum reform at our university resulted in statistics courses which were considerably shortened in time, thereby limiting students' possibility to distribute study activities. Independent samples of students from before and after the reform were compared. To gauge conceptual understanding of statistics, students answered open ended questions in which they were asked to explain and relate important statistical concepts. It was shown that the reduction of distributed practice had a negative effect on students' understanding. The finding that condensed courses make it more difficult for students to reach proper understanding of the subject matter is of interest for anyone who is engaged in reforming curricula or designing courses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of distributed practice on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics

et al. 2010

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“…Under the assumption commonly made in the literature [4,5] that the loss of knowledge over a retention interval is proportional to the initial knowledge, every student loses a standard fraction of their knowledge over the period of time between the pretest and the posttest. In this case, a plot of loss versus the pretest score will (like a gain curve with constant normalized gain) be linear with a negative slope.…”

Section: Analysis Of Gain and Loss Curvesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is reasonable to expect some baseline knowledge entering freshman mechanics among the participants, since MIT freshmen generally arrive with at least one year of high school physics. If we make the usual assumption [5] that preinstruction MBT scores measure baseline knowledge, it is possible to investigate how much of the knowledge gained during freshman physics remains at graduation. Plotting the score shift during the 3.5 years between freshman physics and graduation versus the gain made during the freshman course (Fig.…”

Section: Gain and Loss On The Mbtmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do seniors remember from freshman physics?

Pawl

Barrantes

Pritchard

et al. 2012

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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We have given a group of 56 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seniors who took mechanics as freshmen a written test similar to the final exam they took in their freshman course as well as the Mechanics Baseline Test (MBT) and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS). Students in majors unrelated to physics scored 60% lower on the written analytic part of the final than they would have as freshmen. The mean score of all participants on the MBT was insignificantly changed from their average on the posttest they took as freshmen. However, the students' performance on 9 of the 26 MBT items (with 6 of the 9 involving graphical kinematics) represents a gain over their freshman posttest score (a normalized gain of about 70%), while their performance on the remaining 17 questions is best characterized as a loss of approximately 50% of the material learned in the freshman course. On multiple-choice questions covering advanced physics concepts, the mean score of the participants was about 50% lower than the average performance of freshmen. Although attitudinal survey results indicate that almost half the seniors feel the specific mechanics course content is unlikely to be useful to them, a significant majority (75%-85%) feel that physics does teach valuable problem solving skills, and an overwhelming majority believe that mechanics should remain a required course at MIT.

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“…These structural differences result in LFM-instructed students receiving fewer opportunities to take and to retake as many tests as PSI-instructed students, and thus the reported differences between these two systems are potentially confounded by the number-of-trials effect typically observed in laboratory studies. Despite these differences and the potential for PSI-instructed students to complete more trials, there is little doubt that specialized systems of instruction create unique opportunities for students to evaluate and increase their level of comprehension through repeated testing (e.g., Hursh, 1976;Kulik, Jaska, & Kulik, 1978;Semb & Ellis, 1992;Semb, Ellis, & Araujo, 1993).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Learning in the Introductory Course

Brosvic

Epstein

2007

Psychol Rec

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In an examination of the effects of timing of feedback on student learning, participants were randomly assigned to complete five introductory course tests using either control (Scantron form) or one of three feedback (end-of-test, 24-hr delay, immediate) procedures. A cumulative final examination with 50 new items and 10 items repeated from each course test was used to assess retention during the academic semester. Fifty final examination items, administered at postcourse intervals of 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, were used to measure longer-term retention. The provision of feedback at either the end of a test or after a 24-hr delay, relative to control procedures, increased retention for 3 to 5 weeks during the semester. Robust enhancement of retention at all intervals was observed only when immediate feedback was provided. The magnitude of the immediate feedback effect indicates that students benefit from affirmation of correct responding and notification of incorrect responding during classroom tests and suggests noteworthy potential for creating learnable moments during which students validate and self-correct their knowledge stores.General education and introductory courses expose students to the foundations of an academic discipline. The broadening of the content areas that define academic disciplines, and the integration of multimedia resources into the teaching process, markedly increase the breadth of and depth at which concepts can be presented to enhance traditional lecture materials. Indeed, these changes have prompted many departments to develop a two-semester introductory sequence to better prepare students and to expose them to the content and theory that define an academic major. At many institutions, enrolling in next-level courses and matriculating into an academic major require completion of the introductory course or courses, often with a minimum grade requirement. This gateway reflects not only contemporary enrollment management practices but also traditional pedagogy that learning within an academic major is sequential and that foundational concepts presented in lower level courses should be mastered prior to enrolling in upper-level courses.

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Knowledge Taught in School: What Is Remembered?

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

The effect of distributed practice on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics

The effect of distributed practice on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics

What do seniors remember from freshman physics?

Enhancing Learning in the Introductory Course

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