Correlation Between Prereq Knowledge and Later Success in a Class

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED509985.pdf

This experiment attempted to understand the necessity of a pre-requisit general Psychology course for an upper level Psychology course by looking at the correlation between success on a test given on the first day and the overall grade at the end of the semester. There was a correlation (those who did better on the first test received a better overall grade) but I was interested because of what I thought what not addressed. The questions were, for the most part, not recognition questions, but recall questions. This meant that the students had to fill in the blanks and explain things instead of seeing the correct answer on a multiple question quiz and understand it. This tests knowledge more accurately (one should be able to explain something to truly understand it) but it seems that we also know re-learning is effective in truly understanding something. Multiple choice questions, from the results, were answered more correctly more often on the test, and so it seems that one could recognize the right answer and then, likely, would re-learn the information well since it would "ring a bell." This wasn't addressed, though, so much, as the disappointment that most students could not effectively elaborate on questions which forced them entirely to recall something from their own mind.

Megan Fajardo