Biology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2019 Jun;18(2):ar12. doi: 10.1187/cbe.17-07-0137.
Multistage collaborative exams are implemented to enhance learning and retention of course material. However, the effects of multistage collaborative exams on retention of course content are varied. These discrepancies may be due to a number of factors. To date, studies examining collaborative exams and content retention have used questions that all, or mostly, require students to select an answer, rather than generate one of their own. However, content retention can improve when students generate their own responses. Thus, we examined the effect of collaborative exams with open-ended questions on retention of course content. Retention was measured at two time periods; one relatively shortly (9 days) following a collaborative exam and another over a longer time period (23 days). Furthermore, we examined whether content retention differed for low-, mid-, or high--performing students. Our results suggest that collaborative exams offer retention benefits at relatively long time periods between pre- and posttests, but not over shorter time periods. Retention varied across students in different performance categories. Our study, the first to use only open-ended questions, showed relatively small effects compared with studies using multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank format, but still suggest that collaborative exams can aid in content retention.
多阶段协作考试被实施以增强对课程材料的学习和保留。然而，多阶段协作考试对保留课程内容的效果是不同的。这些差异可能归因于许多因素。迄今为止，研究协作考试和内容保留的研究使用的问题都是要求学生选择答案，而不是自己生成答案。然而，当学生生成自己的回答时，内容保留可以得到提高。因此，我们研究了具有开放式问题的协作考试对课程内容保留的影响。保留程度在两个时间段进行测量；一个是在协作考试后相对较短的时间（9 天），另一个是在较长的时间（23 天）。此外，我们还研究了内容保留是否因低、中、高表现学生而有所不同。我们的结果表明，协作考试在前后测之间的相对较长时间内提供了保留的好处，但在较短的时间内则没有。不同表现类别的学生之间的保留程度存在差异。我们的研究是首次仅使用开放式问题，与使用多项选择或填空格式的研究相比，效果相对较小，但仍表明协作考试可以帮助保留内容。
