Many college students struggle to learn and remember critical concepts in their science courses, which is understandable given (a) that science concepts are often difficult to understand and (b) that students are expected to master hundreds of concepts to succeed even in introductory science courses.   Helping students learn and retain science concepts – and remember them for use in subsequent courses – were main goals of the current project.  In particular, college students from introductory biology and chemistry classes at a major state university participated.  The instructors of these courses generated a list of critical items that included science concepts, terminology, and definitions that were viewed as central to understanding the key ideas in each course.  For instance, in biology, items included the names of anatomical structures (e.g., the parts of a neuron or vein), the definitions of critical concepts (e.g., definitions for “transcription” and “translation”), and the steps in key processes (e.g., the stages involved in how a neuron fires).  Instructors generated hundreds of critical items that students were expected to learn. 

At the beginning of a course, participating students were assigned to one of two groups.  One group was asked to use a strategy called successive relearning to learn the items, whereas the other business-as-usual group was encouraged to learn the concepts as they would normally do.  More specifically, during a study session, the students using successive relearning were tested on small subsets of the entire set of items and then received feedback on their answer, which they could restudy.  They would then continue being tested (and restudying) until they could recall each item correctly (e.g., when asked “what is transcription?”, they could produce the correct answer in their own words).  On several other study sessions, the students then returned to be tested on (and restudy) those same items until they could again correctly recall them.   Throughout the course, these students proceeded to study all the items using successive relearning.  Accordingly, across the span of the course, these students first learned each item until they could recall it correctly from memory, and then later returned to relearn each item in at least two other study sessions.  It is this kind of successive relearning (i.e., learn something once and then return later to relearn it) that has been shown to produce long-lived memories and was expected to help students retain the science items.  Students in the latter business-as-usual group were given the same items (so that both groups would have a packet of the items that the instructor identified as important for the course).  This business-as-usual group was also told about and could use successive relearning to study the items, but they were not expected to use it.  Instead, they just reported how they studied the items as they prepared for the course exams (and, very few of these students reported using successive relearning).

We evaluated the benefits of using successive relearning in several ways.  First, and most important, all students completed a test across the items near the end of the semester-long course.  For this test, students were presented with a question relevant to an item (e.g., What is transcription?), and they were asked to provide an answer in their own words.  Despite that all students were responsible for learning the key items for the final exam, performance on this test was substantially higher for students who used successive relearning than for the business-as-usual group who studied on their own.  In particular, regardless of whether the course was biology or chemistry, performance on this test was about 50 percent correct for those using successive relearning but only around 20 percent correct for those on their own.  Second, we also administered the same test several months after they completed the course, so as to evaluate their longer-term retention of the material.  As expected, in both classes, retention of the items was about twice as high for those who used successive relearning (about 35% correct) than for those on their own (14% correct).  Finally, we also evaluated the degree to which using successive relearning influence performance on course exams.  Despite having an advantage in retaining the items, scores on the in-class exams were about the same for both groups – this was true for the introductory course was well as for the first exam in advanced course that occurred the next semester.  In summary, successive relearning does boost learning and retention of science concepts, although the increases in memory for the concepts will not always transfer to course-administered exams.  

Last Modified: 05/08/2025
Modified by: John T Dunlosky