This research investigates the impact of recitation timing on student exam performance in undergraduate general chemistry. According to Karplus' Learning Cycle, students should experience three phases in their learning process: Exploration, Concept Invention, and Concept Application. In chemistry courses at large institutions, it is common for students to have recitation sections, which meet either before or after their lecture. For this study recitation was designated as the "exploration" phase and the recitation timing was leveraged in order to categorize students into two groups: those who experience Karplus' Learning Cycle (recitation before lecture group) and those who experience a "traditional" learning cycle, i.e., Concept Invention, Exploration, and Concept Application (recitation after lecture group). As such, we investigated if there was a difference in exam performance between the two groups of students based upon which learning cycle they experienced. We observed that students who attended recitation before lecture typically experienced a, statistically significant, higher average exam performance across three mid-term exams, at the 90% confidence level. Given the difference in performance between the two groups, we have reason to believe that student performance is affected by recitation timing and may be due to the fact that students who attend recitation before lecture have a chance to develop a foundational understanding of the content prior to attending lecture, which enables the students to get more out of the lecture, thus leading to higher performance on exams.

Impact of recitation timing on student performance in undergraduate general chemistry

ACS Fall 2021

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