AbstractsMathematics

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of notecards, a study aid, on students’ learning in three sections of a non-majors undergraduate Human Biology course. Moreover, the effectiveness of illustrations as study aids was compared with the effectiveness of descriptions as study aids. Presently, there is not much research on this particular topic, but notecards are a quite common method of studying. Hypothesis: It was expected that the use of notecards would be more beneficial to student learning than no use at all. Furthermore, it was expected that drawing illustrations would be more effective than writing definitions or descriptions. Method: Three Human Biology courses taught by the same instructor took part in the study. One class acted as the control in which they did not complete notecards, while the other two courses completed three notecards per unit. Of the two classes, one class completed notecards by drawing illustrations while the other course completed notecards in which students were to write definitions or descriptions. Pre-tests and post-tests were given at the beginning of the semester and the end of the semester, respectively, to identify students’ overall knowledge retention and learning during the semester. Results: The Paired t-test and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test showed that there was a statistically significant difference of change scores between the pre-tests and post-tests within each group meaning all sections of the course learned. The Shapiro-Wilk’s test showed that data was normally distributed to continue the One-Way ANOVA tests. The results of the One-Way ANOVA showed that there was a statistically significant difference between all groups, and the Tukey post-hoc test pinpointed the statistical significance of the One-Way ANOVA between the illustration group and the control group. There was neither a statistically significant difference between the illustration group and the description group nor between the description group and the control group. The Effect Size was small-to-medium, ω = 0.044. The Kruskal-Wallis H test performed on the weekly assignment scores showed there was a statistically significant difference between groups. Dunn’s (1964) procedure with a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons showed that, generally, there was a statistically significant difference from the control group to the illustration group as well as from the control group to the description group, meaning students in the illustration group and the description group performed better on weekly assignments than the control group. The illustration group performed as well as the description group on weekly assignments. The weekly assignment and exam analysis compared average exam percentages and final exam percentages of each group to average assignment percentages to assess whether there were any certain notecard assignments, descriptive or illustrative, that led to…