Factual Recall Research Articles

Cognitive Validity: Can Multiple-Choice Items Tap Historical Thinking Processes?

Cognitive validity examines the relationship between what an assessment aims to measure and what it actually elicits from test takers. The present study examined whether multiple-choice items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 12 U.S. history exam elicited the historical thinking processes they were designed to measure. Think-aloud data from 27 accomplished high school students revealed that in no instances did students engage in the intended processes. Rather, the items typically elicited three construct-irrelevant processes: factual recall/recognition, reading comprehension, and test-taking strategies. Further, findings revealed that although the items often prompted students to engage in factual recall, they were often not sound indicators of student knowledge. Implications for history testing and alternative forms of assessment are discussed.

Does the Drug Facts Label for nonprescription drugs meet its design objectives? A new procedure for assessing label effectiveness.

We demonstrate an expanded procedure for assessing drug-label comprehension. Innovations include a pretest of drug preconceptions, verbal ability and label attentiveness measures, a label-scanning task, a free-recall test, category-clustering measures, and preconception-change scores. In total, 55 female and 39 male undergraduates read a facsimile Drug Facts Label for aspirin, a Cohesive-Prose Label, or a Scrambled-Prose Label. The Drug Facts Label outperformed the Scrambled-Prose Label, but not the Cohesive-Prose Label, in scanning effectiveness. The Drug Facts Label was no better than the Cohesive-Prose Label or the Scrambled-Prose Label in promoting attentiveness, recall and organization of drug facts, or misconception refutation. Discussion focuses on the need for refutational labels based on a sequence-of-events text schema.

Strategies for Developing English Academic Writing Skills

Non-native English-speaking students at, or about to enter British Universities and other Western universities where the language of instruction is English may experience challenges with academic writing, often one of the most important means of assessing students. Pre-sessional and in-sessional English academic writingcourses have been developed to aid students, and traditionally covered a range of topics. This paper discusses essential ‘pre-writing’ tasks. It then outlines some of the essential elements of academic writing; these often focus on paragraph structure, basic components of an essay, and different functional types of essays. Other features covered by this paper include aspects of language such as level of formality, cohesive devices, caution and hedging, supplying evidence, and avoiding plagiarism, amongst others. This paper also emphasizes the growing importance of collaborative learning, critical thinking and autonomous leaning which may be insufficiently familiar to students from non-Western learning environments where traditionally factual recall is given the greatest importance. Inductive and deductive approaches to paragraph organization, and also essay development have also been introduced. These approaches may also contrast with the rhetorical features familiar to non-native students from various cultures around the world and require special attention. Contemporary pre-sessional courses are also becoming more specialized, targeting English suitable for specific sets of disciplines at the undergraduate at postgraduate level. For example, courses focusing in STEM subjects (science technology, engineering and mathematics) are replacing more ‘generic’ academic English courses.

A Comparative Evaluation on effective perception of Aamottpati Siddhant to 3rd BAMS students by traditional method (tree diagram) versus Audio-Visual method.

Effective teaching plays very significant role in acquiring knowledge with long term impact and remembrance. In teaching process many times we focus on factual recall rather than reasoning skills or understanding something better where learners are not actively involved. In this study students of 3rd phase BAMS were taught Aamottpatti Siddhant by Traditional Method (Tree Diagram) versus Audio-Visual Method. Student were familiar of traditional method of teaching however after introducing audio visual method, interest in lecture was increased in students. Audio visual method can be associated with the traditional type of teaching method. Teaching by Audio visual method is interesting to student as well as teachers.

Descriptive analysis of theory examination question papers of 2nd MBBS pharmacology of Krantiguru Shamji Krishna Verma Kachchh University (Gujarat)

Background: The Question Paper is the most important tool of theory exam examination. An attempt was made to assess the pharmacology question papers of university examination in accordance with their guidelines. To assess the pharmacology theory question papers for content validity, area of importance and to test the level of cognitive domain.Methods: Twenty four papers of university comprising 695 questions after preparing 520 learning objective were analysed. All questions were analysed for coverage of different subdivision of Pharmacology and marks allotted to them, type of taxonomic level of each question asked on the basis of verb use and percentage of question asked from area of importance.Results: It was observed that 18.40% weightage of marks given to general pharmacology and least .67% for immunosuppressant in paper I whereas in paper II, 34.90% for antimicrobial agents. About 84% questions were asked from must know area, 8.07% from nice to know area and 7.90 from desirable to know area. In paper I, 92.08% of the questions were to test factual recall (Bloom level I), remaining 07.93% were reasoning type but in other paper verbs were used to test only lower cognitive domain.Conclusions: All the sub-divisions of pharmacology were not covered in each theory assessment. Majority of questions were asked to test lower level of cognitive domain. Theory question papers should be designed to give proper weightage to whole subject area. Blue printing of theory question papers is absolutely necessary.

Enhancing learning by retrieval: Enriching free recall with elaborative prompting

It is well-established in memory research that retrieval fosters learning. When applying this effect in education, it is an important question which type of retrieval task works best. Several studies have shown that learning is enhanced by linking new information with prior knowledge. A potential approach to making retrieval more effective, therefore, is to enrich retrieval instructions with the requirement to elaborate on the learning contents and link them to what is already known. In this study, we compared a free recall condition, as used in many studies on learning by retrieval, with a prompted recall condition in which learners were required to recall the information and apply it to their lives. Fifty-six undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions. They learned from a video-recorded lecture. One week later, learning outcomes were assessed by a posttest measuring fact recall and comprehension of the contents from the video lecture. Learners in the prompted recall group, compared to the free recall group, used more elaborative strategies in response to the recall task and achieved better comprehension scores. The effect on comprehension was mediated by the use of elaborative strategies. This pattern of results supports the constructive retrieval hypothesis, stating that retrieval is most effective when it involves constructive elaboration of the contents being learned. Our findings also encourage the use of pedagogical tasks in classroom teaching that combine elaboration and retrieval.

Patient and public understanding and knowledge of antimicrobial resistance and stewardship in a UK hospital: should public campaigns change focus?

The rising global tide of antimicrobial resistance is a well-described phenomenon. Employing effective and innovative antimicrobial stewardship strategies is an essential approach to combat this public health threat. Education of the public and patients is paramount to enable the success of such strategies. A panel of hospital multidisciplinary healthcare professionals was set up and a short quiz containing true/false statements around antimicrobial stewardship and resistance was designed and piloted. An educational leaflet with the correct replies and supporting information was also produced and disseminated. Participants were recruited on a single day (18 November 2015) from the hospital outpatient clinics and the hospital outpatient pharmacy waiting room. One hundred and forty-five completed quizzes were returned, providing a total of 1450 answers. Overall, 934 of 1450 (64%) statements were scored correctly whilst 481 (33%) were scored incorrectly; 35 (3%) statements were left unscored. We speculate that these results may demonstrate that respondents understood the statements, as only a small proportion of statements were left unanswered. The question dealing with the definition of antimicrobial resistance and the question dealing with the definition of antimicrobial stewardship obtained the most incorrect replies (85% and 72%, respectively). However, a specific factual recall question regarding only one microorganism (MRSA) received the most correct responses (99%). We describe a simple, innovative method of engagement with patients and the general public to help educate and disseminate important public health messages around antimicrobial resistance and stewardship. We also identified the need for public health campaigns to address the knowledge gaps found around this topic.

Social justice in the mathematics classroom

Despite increases in educational attainment in London, too many mathematics lessons remain focused on factual recall and procedural understanding, resulting in disaffection among learners. This study reports on the establishment of a research group, comprising five teacher researchers and myself, which aimed to challenge this situation through adopting a participatory action research methodology. By planning, teaching, and evaluating innovative classroom activities, the group demonstrated how making mathematics more relevant and meaningful can enhance students' engagement and agency. The collaborative and mutually supportive nature of the group developed teacher researchers' self-efficacy in addressing issues of social justice in their mathematics classrooms.

Sleep Restriction Impairs Vocabulary Learning when Adolescents Cram for Exams: The Need for Sleep Study.

The ability to recall facts is improved when learning takes place at spaced intervals, or when sleep follows shortly after learning. However, many students cram for exams and trade sleep for other activities. The aim of this study was to examine the interaction of study spacing and time in bed (TIB) for sleep on vocabulary learning in adolescents. In the Need for Sleep Study, which used a parallel-group design, 56 adolescents aged 15-19 years were randomly assigned to a week of either 5 h or 9 h of TIB for sleep each night as part of a 14-day protocol conducted at a boarding school. During the sleep manipulation period, participants studied 40 Graduate Record Examination (GRE)-type English words using digital flashcards. Word pairs were presented over 4 consecutive days (spaced items), or all at once during single study sessions (massed items), with total study time kept constant across conditions. Recall performance was examined 0 h, 24 h, and 120 h after all items were studied. For all retention intervals examined, recall of massed items was impaired by a greater amount in adolescents exposed to sleep restriction. In contrast, cued recall performance on spaced items was similar between sleep groups. Spaced learning conferred strong protection against the effects of sleep restriction on recall performance, whereas students who had insufficient sleep were more likely to forget items studied over short time intervals. These findings in adolescents demonstrate the importance of combining good study habits and good sleep habits to optimize learning outcomes.

Introducing the Creative Learning Principles: Instructional Tasks Used to Promote Rhizomatic Learning Through Creativity

ABSTRACTProving a child has been adequately educated is manifest through assessments evaluating the recall of facts or the deciphering of codes. How this information is taught and learned is the issue. Webb's depth of knowledge (DOK) and Bloom's taxonomy are cognitive models that drive instruction in today's classrooms. According to these models, creativity is a higher-order learning process. Although creativity has gained a renewed prominence in theoretic academic arenas, on the battleground of the typical classroom, creativity takes a back seat to instructional strategies with the goal of successful standardization of knowledge. Creativity, however, is the cornerstone of arts instruction. Creative learning principles (CLPs) is a system of instructional tasks developed in the arts and used to facilitate the metacognitive act of learning through creativity to solve problems. This article discusses how the CLPs create rhizomatic learning by facilitating connections between art and other disciplines and how they are used in planning.

TH‐E‐201‐01: Diagnostic Radiology Residents Physics Curriculum and Updates

The ABR Core Examination stresses integrating physics into real‐world clinical practice and, accordingly, has shifted its focus from passive recall of facts to active application of physics principles. Physics education of radiology residents poses a challenge. The traditional method of didactic lectures alone is insufficient, yet it is difficult to incorporate physics teaching consistently into clinical rotations due to time constraints.Faced with this challenge, diagnostic medical physicists who teach radiology residents, have been thinking about how to adapt their teaching to the new paradigm, what to teach and meet expectation of the radiology resident and the radiology residency program. The proposed lecture attempts to discuss above questions. Newly developed diagnostic radiology residents physics curriculum by the AAPM Imaging Physics Curricula Subcommittee will be reviewed. Initial experience on hands‐on physics teaching will be discussed. Radiology resident who will have taken the BAR Core Examination will share the expectation of physics teaching from a resident perspective.The lecture will help develop robust educational approaches to prepare radiology residents for safer and more effective lifelong practice. Learning Objectives: Learn updated physics requirements for radiology residents Pursue effective approaches to teach physics to radiology residents Learn expectation of physics teaching from resident perspectiveJ. Zhang, This topic is partially supported by RSNA Education Scholar Grant

TH‐E‐201‐02: Hands‐On Physics Teaching of Residents in Diagnostic Radiology

The ABR Core Examination stresses integrating physics into real‐world clinical practice and, accordingly, has shifted its focus from passive recall of facts to active application of physics principles. Physics education of radiology residents poses a challenge. The traditional method of didactic lectures alone is insufficient, yet it is difficult to incorporate physics teaching consistently into clinical rotations due to time constraints.Faced with this challenge, diagnostic medical physicists who teach radiology residents, have been thinking about how to adapt their teaching to the new paradigm, what to teach and meet expectation of the radiology resident and the radiology residency program. The proposed lecture attempts to discuss above questions. Newly developed diagnostic radiology residents physics curriculum by the AAPM Imaging Physics Curricula Subcommittee will be reviewed. Initial experience on hands‐on physics teaching will be discussed. Radiology resident who will have taken the BAR Core Examination will share the expectation of physics teaching from a resident perspective.The lecture will help develop robust educational approaches to prepare radiology residents for safer and more effective lifelong practice. Learning Objectives: Learn updated physics requirements for radiology residents Pursue effective approaches to teach physics to radiology residents Learn expectation of physics teaching from resident perspectiveJ. Zhang, This topic is partially supported by RSNA Education Scholar Grant

TH‐E‐201‐00: Teaching Radiology Residents: What, How, and Expectation

The ABR Core Examination stresses integrating physics into real‐world clinical practice and, accordingly, has shifted its focus from passive recall of facts to active application of physics principles. Physics education of radiology residents poses a challenge. The traditional method of didactic lectures alone is insufficient, yet it is difficult to incorporate physics teaching consistently into clinical rotations due to time constraints.Faced with this challenge, diagnostic medical physicists who teach radiology residents, have been thinking about how to adapt their teaching to the new paradigm, what to teach and meet expectation of the radiology resident and the radiology residency program. The proposed lecture attempts to discuss above questions. Newly developed diagnostic radiology residents physics curriculum by the AAPM Imaging Physics Curricula Subcommittee will be reviewed. Initial experience on hands‐on physics teaching will be discussed. Radiology resident who will have taken the BAR Core Examination will share the expectation of physics teaching from a resident perspective.The lecture will help develop robust educational approaches to prepare radiology residents for safer and more effective lifelong practice. Learning Objectives: Learn updated physics requirements for radiology residents Pursue effective approaches to teach physics to radiology residents Learn expectation of physics teaching from resident perspectiveJ. Zhang, This topic is partially supported by RSNA Education Scholar Grant

TH‐E‐201‐03: A Radiology Resident's Perspectives of Physics Teaching

The ABR Core Examination stresses integrating physics into real‐world clinical practice and, accordingly, has shifted its focus from passive recall of facts to active application of physics principles. Physics education of radiology residents poses a challenge. The traditional method of didactic lectures alone is insufficient, yet it is difficult to incorporate physics teaching consistently into clinical rotations due to time constraints.Faced with this challenge, diagnostic medical physicists who teach radiology residents, have been thinking about how to adapt their teaching to the new paradigm, what to teach and meet expectation of the radiology resident and the radiology residency program. The proposed lecture attempts to discuss above questions. Newly developed diagnostic radiology residents physics curriculum by the AAPM Imaging Physics Curricula Subcommittee will be reviewed. Initial experience on hands‐on physics teaching will be discussed. Radiology resident who will have taken the BAR Core Examination will share the expectation of physics teaching from a resident perspective.The lecture will help develop robust educational approaches to prepare radiology residents for safer and more effective lifelong practice. Learning Objectives: Learn updated physics requirements for radiology residents Pursue effective approaches to teach physics to radiology residents Learn expectation of physics teaching from resident perspectiveJ. Zhang, This topic is partially supported by RSNA Education Scholar Grant

Written information may not improve factual recall after verbal counseling of mothers in premature labor – a randomized controlled trial

Background: Prenatal consultation is an integral step in the care of women at high risk for preterm delivery. Aims: To examine whether the provision of written information regarding prematurity would improve factual recall and satisfaction following prenatal consultation. Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled trial of expectant mothers from 22 to 30 weeks gestational age. Eligible women received routine verbal prenatal consultation prior to enrollment and randomization. Women in the control group received written information about breast feeding. Women in the intervention group received additional written information about prematurity. Later, a survey was administered to elicit their factual recall and satisfaction. Results: A total of 32 women completed the survey. There was no significant difference in mean factual recall score between both groups (control 76%; intervention 71%; P = 0.45) nor in patients' satisfaction (control 4.31; intervention 4.18; P = 0.71). Conclusions: Providing written information about prematurity to mothers in preterm delivery did not improve their factual recall or satisfaction. This suggests that written information may not have added value to verbal communication in delivering key information to women overwhelmed by the stress of preterm labor. The wide range of individual performance on the factual recall test indicates that some women in preterm labor may not be adequately informed by the prenatal consultation, despite their high level of satisfaction.

Confusing the drug facts on one nonprescription drug label with those on another: The Drug Facts Label as a text schema.

The Drug Facts Label is designed to guide consumers in comparing nonprescription drugs. Undergraduates studied and recalled drug facts for three analgesic or non-analgesic labels using Drug Facts Label headings as retrieval cues. They then studied and recalled drug facts from an aspirin label. Aspirin recall was greater when the prior labels were analgesics, but prior-label intrusion errors were also greater. These two effects were associated with the number of prior drug labels on which facilitating and interfering drug facts appeared. Using the Drug Facts Label schema to read drug labels can both enhance and degrade the recall of nonprescription drug facts.

Degeneration of the Hilbert pairing in formal groups over local fields

For an arbitrary local field K (a finite extension of the field Qp) and an arbitrary formal group law F over K, we consider an analog cF of the classical Hilbert pairing. A theorem by S.V. Vostokov and I.B. Fesenko says that if the pairing cF has a certain fundamental symbol property for all Lubin–Tate formal groups, then cF = 0. We generalize the theorem of Vostokov–Fesenko to a wider class of formal groups. Our first result concerns formal groups that are defined over the ring OK of integers of K and have a fixed ring O0 of endomorphisms, where O0 is a subring of OK. We prove that if the symbol cF has the above-mentioned symbol property, then cF = 0. Our second result strengthens the first one in the case of Honda formal groups. The paper consists of three sections. After a short introduction in Section 1, we recall basic definitions and facts concerning formal group laws in Section 2. In Section 3, we state and prove two main results of the paper (Theorems 1 and 2). Refs. 8.

Changes in Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise in an Engineering Professional Development Course

Although the consensus seems to be that high-school-level introductory engineering courses should focus on design, this creates a problem for teacher training. Traditionally, math and science teachers are trained to teach and assess factual knowledge and closed-ended problemsolving techniques specific to a particular discipline, which is unsuited for teaching design skills for open-ended problems that may involve multiple engineering disciplines. Instead, engineering teacher training should use the more fluid framework of adaptive expertise which values the ability to apply knowledge in innovative ways as well as recall facts and solve problems using conventional techniques. In this study, we examined a 6-week program to train math/science teachers to teach high school design engineering. For each curriculum unit, we had a pre-posttest to assess the teachers’ factual knowledge and ability to solve typical problems (termed ‘‘efficiency’’) and their ability to apply their knowledge to reason through open-ended problems (termed ‘‘innovation’’). In addition, we conducted a pre-posttest to see whether teachers’ attitudes and beliefs related to adaptive expertise changed over the course of the program.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of progressive disclosure questions as an assessment tool for knowledge and skills in a problem based learning setting among third year medical students at The University of The West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago.

BackgroundAt the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, third year undergraduate teaching is a hybrid of problem-based learning (PBL) and didactic lectures. PBL discourages students from simply getting basic factual knowledge but encourages them to integrate these basic facts with clinical knowledge and skills. Recently progressive disclosure questions (PDQ) also known as modified essay questions (MEQs) were introduced as an assessment tool which is reported to be in keeping with the PBL philosophy.ObjectiveTo describe the effectiveness of the PDQ as an assessment tool in a course that integrates the sub-specialties of Anatomical Pathology, Chemical Pathology, Haematology, Immunology, Microbiology, Pharmacology and Public Health.MethodsA descriptive analysis of examination questions in PDQs, and the students’ performance in these examinations was performed for the academic years 2011–2012, 2012–2013, and 2013–2014 in one-third year course that integrates Anatomical Pathology, Chemical Pathology, Haematology, Immunology, Microbiology, Pharmacology and Public Health.ResultsThe PDQs reflected real life scenarios and were composed of questions of different levels of difficulty by Blooms’ Taxonomy, from basic recall through more difficult questions requiring analytical, interpretative and problem solving skills. The integrated PDQs in the years 2011–2012, 2012–2013, 2013–2014 respectively was 52.9, 52.5, 58 % simple recall of facts. By sub-specialty this ranged from 26.7 to 100 %, 18.8 to 70 %, and 23.1 to 100 % in the 3 years respectively. The rest required higher order cognitive skills. For some sub-specialties, students’ performance was better where the examination was mostly basic recall, and was poorer where there were more higher-order questions. The different sub-specialties had different percentages of contribution in the integrated examinations ranging from 4 % in Public health to 22.9 % in Anatomical Pathology.ConclusionThe PDQ asked students questions in an integrated fashion in keeping with the PBL process. More care should be taken to ensure appropriate questions are included in the examinations to assess higher order cognitive skills. However in an integrated course, some sub-specialties may not have content requiring higher cognitive level questions in certain clinical cases. More care should be taken in choosing clinical cases that integrate all the sub-specialties.

Linear normality of general linear sections and some graded Betti numbers of 3-regular projective schemes

In this paper we study graded Betti numbers of any nondegenerate 3-regular algebraic set X in a projective space Pn. More concretely, via Generic initial ideals (Gins) method we mainly consider ‘tailing’ Betti numbers, whose homological index is at least codim(X,Pn). For this purpose, we first introduce a key definition ‘ND(1) property’, which provides a suitable ground where one can generalize the concepts such as ‘being nondegenerate’ or ‘of minimal degree’ from the case of varieties to the case of more general closed subschemes and give a clear interpretation on the tailing Betti numbers. Next, we recall basic notions and facts on Gins theory and we analyze the generation structure of the reverse lexicographic (rlex) Gins of 3-regular ND(1) subschemes. As a result, we present exact formulae for these tailing Betti numbers, which connect them with linear normality of general linear sections of X∩Λ with a linear subspace Λ of dimension at least codim(X,Pn). Finally, we consider some applications and related examples.