Board 121: Retrieval Practice and Spacing: Effects on Long-Term Learning among Engineering Precalculus Students

Abstract

She received her B.S., MEng, and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Louisville. Dr. Ralston teaches undergraduate engineering mathematics and is currently involved in educational research on the effective use of technology in engineering education, the incorporation of critical thinking in undergraduate engineering education, and retention of engineering students. She leads a research group whose goal is to foster active interdisciplinary research which investigates learning and motivation and whose findings will inform the development of evidence-based interventions to promote retention and student success in engineering. Her fields of technical expertise include process modeling, simulation, and process control.

Improving Lower Primary Students’ Vocabulary Retention Through Interactive Storyboard Game (ISG)

“…This further explains that constantly repeating and meaningful exposure to the lexical items that have been learnt are significant in promoting the students' understanding and memory (Nation, 2001;Schmitt, 2008). Hopkins et al (2018) claim that the more frequently a piece of information is retrieved from memory, the higher its chance to be remembered over a long period of time. They continue by stating that an increased period of time between retrievals increases long-term retention, up to 80%.…”

“…They continue by stating that an increased period of time between retrievals increases long-term retention, up to 80%. One method to increase long-term memory retention is by applying a method called retrieval practice (Hopkins et al, 2018). It is proven by work from Hopkins et al (2018) that long -term memory of a learner can be improved by utilising the right technique.…”

An Interdisciplinary Research Group’s Collaboration to Understand First-Year Engineering Retention

“…A summer intervention improved algebra skill for incoming students, however did not impact performance in Math 101. o Spaced retrieval practice enhances learning in pre-calculus [42]. o Increasing the amount of retrieval practice impacts short-term but not long-term retention in precalculus, whereas more spacing of retrieval practice does impact both short-term and long-term timescales [43], [44]. o Physics students who explored a difficult concept with novel problem-solving prior to instruction gained greater conceptual knowledge than students who received instruction followed by the same problem-solving activity [45].…”