The effects of study questions on college students' test performances

Abstract

Most educational psychology books contain a section on instructional objectives, and frequently, under this topic a statement can be found to the effect that instructional planning is most efficient when instructional objectives are specified in behavioral terms. Behavioral objectives describe the behaviors that successful learners should be able to demonstrate upon completing a course (Gagne, 1965, p. 241; Lindvall, 1964). Mager goes a step further and suggests that not only is it helpful for the instructor to specify behavioral objectives for a course but that by giving a copy of the course objectives to the students, the students will become much more efficient learners (Mager, 1962, p, 4). The rationale for this suggestion is that if a learner knows precisely what is expected of him then he can better focus his energies on course essentials and even evaluate his own progress in terms of achieving the course objectives. The present study was designed to determine whether providing students with behavioral objectives does in fact increase their learning efficiency.Related research by Mager and Clark (1963) found that adults, when provided with curriculum control and detailed behaviorally stated objectives, completed an engineer training course in seven and a half weeks which normally consumed six months training time when behavioral objectives and learner-control were not used. PROCEDUREA beginning educational psychology course a t Southern Illinois University was analyzed and it was determined that the behavioral requirements for the course consisted primarily of paasing multiple choice tests over lectures and reading asaignments.For the experiment, the twelve-week course was divided into six, two-week instructional units with a different content area being covered in each unit. Fifty-item multiple choice tests were then written for each unit. The procedure used during the quarter was as follows. For the first, third, and fifth instructional units, the students were provided at the beginning of the unit with a syllabus listing the topics to be covered in the unit, the reading assignment and the date of the test over the unit. For the second, fourth, and sixth units the students were provided at the beginning of the units with the reading assignment, the date of the unit test, and eighty stems (question parts for multiple choice test items). Fifty of the eighty stems were used on the unit test. Page numbers in the textbook where the information for the test items could be found were also included with each of the eighty stems. Test items covering lecture material indicated that the information to answer the question would be presented in the lectures.The 320 undergraduate students enrolled for the course were randomly assigned to six groups. Each of the six unit tests was administered t o one of the six groups on the first day of class. (These will be referred to as pretests.) Then each unit test was administered to the entire class a t the end of each tweweek unit (these will be referred to as posttests). Th...

THE EFFECTS OF STUDY QUESTIONS AND GRADES ON STUDENT TEST PERFORMANCE IN A COLLEGE COURSE1

“…The results from Experiment I are similar to those reported by Miles et al (1967) in which students answered study questions far more frequently than non-study questions. However, there are two important differences.…”

“…The results of both experiments clearly demonstrated that students answered study questions correctly on quizzes and exams 20 to 30% more frequently than non-study questions. These findings are similar to those reported by Miles, Kibler, and Pettigrew (1967), Jenkins and Deno (1971), and Jenkins and Neisworth (1973). Unlike the previous findings, however, students in the present study mastered nearly all of the study questions at 90% correct or better.…”

“…Research by Miles, Kibler, and Pettigrew (1967) demonstrated that students who were given study questions in advance performed 15.2%, better on unit examinations than students who were not given objectives. However, they made no attempt to control for changes in as-signment or item difficulty between study and non-study question conditions, and they made no within-group or within-assignment comparisons.…”

Effective Use of Objectives and Monitoring

“…Several studies (Parker et aI., 1972;Semb, Hopkins, & Hursh, 1973;Miles, Kibler, & Pettigrew, 1967) suggest that use of behavioral objectives does increase student performance on tests of knowledge in specific subject areas. Other studies (Jenkins & Deno, 1971;Baker, 1969) have produced generally nonsignificant differences between students using behavioral objectives and those not using the objectives.…”