Should Students Have Long Term Retention Of Course Material

There is significant amount of evidence that supports the idea that students have long-term retention of course material when they take more than one cumulative exam throughout the semester, as oppose to courses in which students have only one cumulative exam at the termination of the semester. The article, â€Å"Cumulative Exams in the Introductory Psychology Course,† by Natalie Lawrence, examines the importance of cumulative exams in impacting students’ long-term memory of material, if given more throughout the course. This is significant for both teachers and students to acknowledge when instructing or participating in a college course. The study consisted of 105 participants in which 59 were women and 46 men. Participants were students in†¦show more content†¦Though the control group does not receive any type of treatment and is randomly selected, they do play a crucial role when establishing if there was significance in the data collected as well as the re sults. The control group is what helps in determining if the experiment did have an effect and to which extent. The first exam for each section both consisted of 50 multiple-choice questions, they were indistinguishable. This being said, the change came about during the second exam and third exams when the cumulative section took exams consisting of 40 questions that were based on recently learned material with 10 questions based on information from previously learned material that were on earlier exams. Whereas, for the noncumulative section, the second and third exams were 50 questions that were only from recent material. The final exam was, however, was cumulative for both sections. There was one independent variable, which was the type of exams that were given throughout the semester. The independent variable had two levels, cumulative and non-cumulative exams. In order to test the retention of the information between the students, the professor gave students a follow-up exam two months after the semester finished. The test that was given consisted of 50 multiple-choice questions in which the professor made sure that none of the questions were on previous exams. She gave