What They Remember May Not Be What They Understand: A Study of Mnemonic Recall and Performance by Introductory Statistics Students

A large-scale (n = 1323) survey of mnemonic recall, self-reported familiarity, cued explanation, and application by introductory statistics students was conducted at a large research university in the southeastern United States. The students were presented 14 mnemonics during the fall 2017 term. Dif...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of statistics and data science education 2024-10, Vol.32 (4), p.416-431
Main Authors: Mocko, Megan, Wagler, Amy E., Lesser, Lawrence M., Francis, Wendy S., Blush, Jennifer M., Schleicher, Karly, Barrientos, Patricia S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blooms taxonomy
Community colleges
Data science
Hybrid
Inquiry method
Learning
Memory
Mnemonic
Online
Science education
Statistics education
Students
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Summary:A large-scale (n = 1323) survey of mnemonic recall, self-reported familiarity, cued explanation, and application by introductory statistics students was conducted at a large research university in the southeastern United States. The students were presented 14 mnemonics during the fall 2017 term. Different nonoverlapping cohorts of students were asked at different time points to complete a survey about mnemonic use. At each time point, the students were asked to recall any mnemonic that they remembered, explain the mnemonic when cued, self-report their degree of familiarity, and apply the mnemonic. Of the 14 mnemonics, acronym-type mnemonics were recalled more frequently, but longer phrase-type mnemonics were explained and applied more often. These findings suggest that instructors should provide scaffolding to move a student from recalling a mnemonic to using a mnemonic toward successful completion of the statistics problem at hand.
ISSN:2693-9169
2693-9169
DOI:10.1080/26939169.2024.2334905