Burdo Joseph, O'Dwyer Laura
Biology Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; and
Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Adv Physiol Educ. 2015 Dec;39(4):335-40. doi: 10.1152/advan.00041.2015.
Concept mapping and retrieval practice are both educational methods that have separately been reported to provide significant benefits for learning in diverse settings. Concept mapping involves diagramming a hierarchical representation of relationships between distinct pieces of information, whereas retrieval practice involves retrieving information that was previously coded into memory. The relative benefits of these two methods have never been tested against each other in a classroom setting. Our study was designed to investigate whether or not concept mapping or retrieval practice produced a significant learning benefit in an undergraduate physiology course as measured by exam performance and, if so, was the benefit of one method significantly greater than the other. We found that there was a trend toward increased exam scores for the retrieval practice group compared with both the control group and concept mapping group, and that trend achieved statistical significance for one of the four module exams in the course. We also found that women performed statistically better than men on the module exam that contained a substantial amount of material relating to female reproductive physiology.
概念图绘制和检索练习都是教育方法，此前已有报告分别指出它们在不同环境下的学习中能带来显著益处。概念图绘制涉及将不同信息片段之间的关系以层次结构的形式绘制成图，而检索练习则涉及检索先前编码到记忆中的信息。这两种方法的相对益处从未在课堂环境中相互比较过。我们的研究旨在调查在本科生理学课程中，概念图绘制或检索练习是否通过考试成绩衡量产生显著的学习益处，如果是，一种方法的益处是否显著大于另一种方法。我们发现，与对照组和概念图绘制组相比，检索练习组的考试成绩有提高的趋势，并且在该课程的四门模块考试中的一门考试中，这一趋势达到了统计学显著性。我们还发现，在包含大量与女性生殖生理学相关内容的模块考试中，女性的成绩在统计学上优于男性。
