Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides

High-structure courses or flipped courses require students to obtain course content before class so that class time can be used for active-learning exercises. While textbooks are used ubiquitously in college biology courses for content dissemination, studies have shown that students frequently do no...

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Autores principales: Lieu, Rebekah, Wong, Ashley, Asefirad, Anahita, Shaffer, Justin F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28747356
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-11-0320
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author Lieu, Rebekah
Wong, Ashley
Asefirad, Anahita
Shaffer, Justin F.
author_facet Lieu, Rebekah
Wong, Ashley
Asefirad, Anahita
Shaffer, Justin F.
author_sort Lieu, Rebekah
collection PubMed
description High-structure courses or flipped courses require students to obtain course content before class so that class time can be used for active-learning exercises. While textbooks are used ubiquitously in college biology courses for content dissemination, studies have shown that students frequently do not read their textbooks. To address this issue, we created preclass reading guides that provided students with a way to actively engage with the required reading for each day of class. To determine whether reading guide completion before class is associated with increased performance, we surveyed students about their use of reading guides in two sections of a large-enrollment (400+ students) introductory biology course and used multiple linear regression models to identify significant correlations. The results indicated that greater than 80% of students completed the reading guides before class and that full completion of the reading guides before class was significantly positively correlated with exam performance. Reading guides in most cases were used similarly between different student groups (based on gender, ethnicity, and aptitude). These results suggest that optional preclass reading guides may help students stay on track to acquire course content in introductory biology and thus result in improved exam performance.
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spelling pubmed-55894262017-09-14 Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides Lieu, Rebekah Wong, Ashley Asefirad, Anahita Shaffer, Justin F. CBE Life Sci Educ Article High-structure courses or flipped courses require students to obtain course content before class so that class time can be used for active-learning exercises. While textbooks are used ubiquitously in college biology courses for content dissemination, studies have shown that students frequently do not read their textbooks. To address this issue, we created preclass reading guides that provided students with a way to actively engage with the required reading for each day of class. To determine whether reading guide completion before class is associated with increased performance, we surveyed students about their use of reading guides in two sections of a large-enrollment (400+ students) introductory biology course and used multiple linear regression models to identify significant correlations. The results indicated that greater than 80% of students completed the reading guides before class and that full completion of the reading guides before class was significantly positively correlated with exam performance. Reading guides in most cases were used similarly between different student groups (based on gender, ethnicity, and aptitude). These results suggest that optional preclass reading guides may help students stay on track to acquire course content in introductory biology and thus result in improved exam performance. American Society for Cell Biology 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5589426/ /pubmed/28747356 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-11-0320 Text en © 2017 R. Lieu, A. Wong, A. Asefirad, and J. F. Shaffer. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2017 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0). “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology.
spellingShingle Article
Lieu, Rebekah
Wong, Ashley
Asefirad, Anahita
Shaffer, Justin F.
Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title_full Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title_fullStr Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title_full_unstemmed Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title_short Improving Exam Performance in Introductory Biology through the Use of Preclass Reading Guides
title_sort improving exam performance in introductory biology through the use of preclass reading guides
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28747356
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-11-0320
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