It is a common complaint among teachers that students forget what they have learned soon after taking a test. The phenomenon is seen in both secondary and undergraduate chemistry courses. This study examines the length of time after a test that students in three different chemistry courses (undergraduate nursing, nonscience majors, and high school…

This study employs the Solomon Four-Group Design to measure student knowledge of the United States government and student knowledge of current events at the beginning of a U.S. government course and at the end. In both areas, knowledge improves significantly. Regarding knowledge of the U.S. government, both males and females improve at similar…

Introductory biology courses are frequently offered separately to biology majors and nonbiology majors, with the assumption that the two groups of students are different enough to merit different courses. To assess the evidence behind this assumption, we compared students in two different genetics classes at the University of Colorado-Boulder, one…

"Points of View" addresses issues faced by many people within the life sciences educational realm. This issue addresses the question "What should a biology student know?" There has been a long, evolving, and often politically charged debate as to what the nonmajor student should know about science. In order to establish a basis…