Some Retention, but Not Enough

Abstract

The retention of introductory psychology course content 4 months after the end of a semester was compared to the performance of a group of undergraduates who had not taken a psychology course. Instructed students performed significantly better on a multiple-choice test of general psychology content than those who received no instruction, but the differences were disappointingly small in educational terms. Similar retention scores were obtained for both a traditional lecture approach and a teaching strategy that focused on concept learning. Further research preceded by the development of a more adequate test to measure retention is needed to clarify and expand these tentative findings.

Long-term retention of basic science knowledge: a review study

“…As already noticed, if knowledge retention is judged in terms of passing or failing a test, even relatively small losses may result in a large proportion of students 'flunking' (e.g., Rickard et al 1988;Rico et al 1981), and results may appear more dramatic than they actually are. Consequently, this way of assessing knowledge may contribute to the belief of ''remembering almost nothing.''…”

“…After being pretested, students attend the course. Preferably, the study also includes a ''control'' group of randomly selected students who do not attend the course, to control for possible learning of the subject matter outside the classroom (e.g., Rickard et al 1988). Alternatively, two types of educational interventions (e.g., a traditional and an innovative course) are compared for long-term knowledge retention (e.g., Holcomb et al 1982;Kerfoot et al 2006;Sinclair 1965).…”

Introductory Psychology Student Performance: Weekly Quizzes Followed by a Cumulative Final Exam

“…This format led to large reading assignments for students (often more than 100 pages). Given that researchers have found that introductory students retain little after the semester is over (Rickard, Rogers, Ellis, & Beidleman, 1988;VanderStoep, Fagerlin, & Feenstra, 2000), I began thinking about alternative approaches to teaching the course. I wanted to redesign the course to reduce student anxiety and enhance student performance, so I changed my teaching and testing strategy dramatically.…”

Animation-Based Teaching of Semiconductor Devices: Long-Term Improvement in Students’ Achievements in a Two-Year College

“…Educational studies occurring in the classroom -the kind on which we will focus below -examine retention over a period of several months. Studies in this category have examined retention in a variety of areas of learning such as psychology [22], chemistry [23] and medical sciences [24]- [25]. The results of most of these studies can be explained through the Ebbinghaus curve according to which the rate of loss of knowledge is relatively high at the end of the learning process and becomes more moderate later.…”