Pretend for a Moment That You Are the Chairperson of the Department

Question

Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is Answers will vary.A full-credit answer should discuss how information about the learning environment is encoded along with the information about facts learned during class lecture/discussion and also mention information that the authors covered in the chapter reading (students do better on exams in same classroom where they learned the material).
--Researchers have noted that people tend to recall information better when the conditions associated with the original learning context are also present at the later retrieval context.It seems that this external,or incidental,information serves as retrieval cues that assist in the recall of information.One such context-dependent cue may be the student's location in the classroom.While it is the source of continued debate,some researchers have documented that students perform better when they are tested in the same classroom as opposed to a different classroom.The same may then be true of the location of their seat or being surrounded by the same persons on exam day as on lecture,or discussion,days.
--Research has documented that persons who were asked to learn information either standing on a beach or submerged in 15 feet of water tended to have significantly better recall when tested in similar conditions at a later time versus being tested in a different environment.By moving the student from the back of the room,the student is placed in a different context.Because the location of others and the location of one's self within the room may provide explicit or implicit retrieval cues that assist the student in attempting to recall information for the exam,we respectfully ask that all of you,as faculty,refrain from shuffling student seating arrangements and locations within the classroom and thereby removing an important retrieval cue from your students.

Pretend for a Moment That You Are the Chairperson of the Department

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