Abstract
The self-reference effect predicts that material that relates to one's self-concept will be easier to remember. Thus, students who relate class lecture material to their own experience using the pair-share technique should improve their retention of that material. Since pair-sharing is a novelty for most students, I modeled the sharing aspect by drawing examples from my own personal experiences. According to comments on student evaluations at the end of the course, students humorously regarded this self-disclosure as "gossip" about my family and friends.
I used sixteen class lectures for a California State University Bakersfield Life-Span Development course, randomly dividing the lectures into four different forms of presentation. They were planned so that eight lectures included pair-share experiences and eight did not. Eight of the same sixteen lectures also included instructor self-disclosure, and eight did not. Results indicated that lectures that included instructor self-disclosure led to better exam performance than lectures without instructor self-disclosure. However, I found no support for a student self-reference effect: Lectures that did not provide students with an opportunity to share in pairs led to better exam performance than lectures that did.
For large classes, the usual form of instruction remains the formal, traditional lecture. Students commonly complain that they can barely remember what they learn from textbooks and lectures long enough to take the exam. Instructors spend considerable time seeking ways to make course material more memorable. Ideally, they want students to understand and apply core concepts presented in their courses, rather than simply memorizing the course material by rote.
Many techniques to encourage student involvement in psychology courses have had positive effects. Polyson (1983) asked students to use several personality theories to analyze the behavior of their favorite TV character. Lawson (1994) had students search the popular media for examples of operant and classical conditioning. Junn (1989) had students write personal letters to their future child on his or her 18th birthday, describing the goals they intended their parenting to achieve. Charlesworth and Slate (1986) had students write letters to their future children about to enter puberty, describing the physical and psychological changes they were about to experience. McAdam (1987) used log-based written assignments, asking students to choose several personal experiences during the semester, then try to explain them with principles from their textbook. In all of these cases, students reported they learned more and understood the material better following the assignments, though only Lawson (1994) looked to see if performance on exams improved.
The self-reference effect (Symons & Johnson, 1997) occurs when individuals show better recall of new material that relates to their self-concept than for new but unrelated material. Memories of people actually encountered and events directly experienced are much more vivid than is recall of things merely read about or heard about from others.
One explanation for this is that individuals simply know more about themselves than about anything else, and thus have a more elaborate cognitive framework around which to organize personal experiences (Lord, 1980). This more interconnected and differentiated framework presumably permits deeper processing of information. Memories of life experiences, thoughts, and feelings make up an important part of what individuals know, and memory increases in size and complexity with age.
A number of studies in psychology have found a self-reference effect for memory of course materials. For example, Benjamin (1991) found that students gained a better understanding of course material when they were able to relate personal anecdotes to course content. Hartlep and Forsyth (2000) demonstrated that students taught to reflect on experiences from their own life that illustrated what they read in their textbook retained more of what they read than students who simply studied the text in their usual way.
Such studies suggest that if students can see the material as an elaboration or a refinement of what they already remember from personal experience, their recall should be better than for material they merely try to memorize by rote.
Active comparisons of life experiences and course content are difficult to accomplish during a class meeting, particularly in large classes. Students often volunteer examples, but it can be time consuming if more than just a few participate at a time. Further, many remain quiet, reluctant to speak in front of a large audience. Hartlep and Forsyth (2000) find that, though it aids retention, few students think to use a self-reference strategy when reading their textbooks. There is little to suggest self-reference is any more common during class lectures.
Goldstein and Benassi (1994) demonstrated a positive relationship between teacher self-disclosure and class participation. In some instances, teacher self-disclosure involved relating personal stories or experiences, where relevant, to illustrate the application of concepts presented in class. In other instances, however, self-disclosure involved relating personal information to students in class as a way to "break the ice," and was unrelated to class material. The results suggested students were more likely to ask questions and volunteer comments in class, speak to the instructor after class, etc., with instructors who used self-disclosure. Goldstein and Benassi (1994) did not measure exam performance, so it is unclear whether self-disclosure also affected retention of lecture material.
Since connecting personal experiences with course content is a novelty for most students, an instructor might do so during lecture to illustrate the process, using self-disclosure (broadly defined here to include stories of friends and family) to provide examples of concepts and to model self-referencing for the students. Even if such self-disclosure has no effect on exam scores, it might at least help establish a friendly classroom atmosphere.
To examine the relative effectiveness of instructor self-disclosure and self-reference on the students' recall of lecture material, I randomly divided 16 class lectures for my California State University Bakersfield course in life-span developmental psychology into four different forms of presentation. Eight lectures included instructor self-disclosure and eight did not. Eight of the same sixteen lectures also included student pair-share activities, and eight did not.
If the understanding of lecture material improves when concepts are elaborated by relevant personal examples, then performance on exams should reflect this effect, particularly when exam questions require application or conceptual, rather than literal, answers. Also, questions from lectures with relevant instructor self-disclosure examples should be answered correctly more often than questions from lectures that present concepts with straightforward definitions alone. Finally, lectures that include both instructor self-disclosure and student pair-share opportunities should produce the best exam performance.
Method
Participants
The study involved sixty-three students at California State University Bakersfield enrolled in an undergraduate course in life-span developmental psychology. The course is a prerequisite for the nursing major, and most of the students enrolled as pre-nursing candidates. This was, for most, their first course in psychology. The class was racially and ethnically diverse, and there were 10 male and 53 female students enrolled.
Materials
I lectured from notes that reflected one of four presentation conditions. Lectures without the pair-share and with the instructor self-disclosure condition specifically included several examples in the form of relevant personal experiences. One example of life-span development I used was my cousin Jay, the product of permissive child rearing, who burned my family's toothbrushes in a gas heating vent. I related another example about the pregnant, diabetic wife of an unnamed faculty colleague. Seven months into her pregnancy, the woman drew gasps of shock and could no longer drive her car. Lectures without either the pair-share or instructor self-disclosure condition stuck to the facts, presenting definitions of concepts without adding illustrations from my experiences.
For example, when discussing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I defined each need level and provided a summary of the therapist's goals for mental health. I did not include specific examples of people who had or had not achieved self-actualization. Lectures with the pair-share but without the instructor self-disclosure condition stuck to the facts without giving examples, but included periodic stops to ask ask students to think of examples from their own experiences and to share them with another student. Finally, lectures with both the pair-share and the instructor self-disclosure conditions included my personal examples as well as periodic stops to ask the students to share in pairs.
The dependent variable was measured with relevant portions of two mid-term exams. Both exams covered reading assignments as well as lecture topics and included several essay questions and multiple-choice questions.
There were three multiple-choice questions from each of the 16 lectures and, for ease of scoring, I considered for analysis student performance on only these items. Each item contained one correct and four incorrect choices, and all were conceptual or application types of questions. Though the actual questions for tests were taken from the instructor's manual that accompanied the text for the course, the following questions are my own examples of the sorts of questions that I used. The first is an application question. The second is a conceptual question:
In response to the Heinz dilemma, a child or adult says: "He should steal the drug because he needs his wife to cook for him, so he has to save her." This is an example of which stage of moral reasoning in Kohlberg's system?
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____ A. Stage 2
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(Individualism, Instrumental Purpose, Naive Hedonism)
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____ B. Stage 3
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(Good Boy, Nice Girl)
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____ C. Stage 4
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(Law and Order)
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____ D. Stage 5
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(Social Contract and Individual Rights)
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____ E. Stage 6
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(Universal Ethics)
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Piaget thought that which one of the following was critical for moral development?
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____ A.
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Parents who are authoritative.
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____ B.
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Models who are altruistic.
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____ C.
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Equal-status conflicts with peers.
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____ D.
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Rewards for good behavior, punishments for bad, consistently applied.
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____ E.
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A capacity for empathy.
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The life-span class met for 90 minutes, three times per week for ten weeks, for a total of 30 class meetings. Mid-term exams occurred every tenth class meeting and covered material presented in class lectures and assigned textbook readings for the previous nine class meetings. Since the last portion of the course included a paper assignment and student presentations, I used only the first two mid-term exams and their associated class meetings in this study.
I used the first day of class to introduce the syllabus and familiarize the students to the pair-share technique, using a few practice examples. Also, the class following the first mid-term exam was devoted in part to a discussion of the exam. That left 16 full lectures, eight for each mid-term exam, that were actually part of the experimental manipulation.
For each class meeting, students viewed an outline of the day's lecture on a large screen at the front of the room. All of the outlines followed the same format, and simply listed the topics in the order in which they would be covered that day—without any further elaboration. I presented the lecture following the projected outline, but from a more extensive collection of notes that reflected one of the four lecture conditions. I randomly divided the 16 lectures into the four treatment conditions, four lectures per condition, with the exception that no two consecutive classes would use the same condition. Three exam questions for each lecture gave a total of 12 questions per each treatment condition.
For analysis, I calculated four separate totals for each student on each exam. I counted the number of correct answers the student got on each exam for the six questions from each treatment condition.
Results
Since preliminary results indicated that the pattern of mean scores for each lecture condition was quite similar across both exams, I combined the data from the two exams. This gave 12 exam questions for each of the four lecture conditions. The mean for each condition is shown in the following table.
| With Pair-Share | Without Pair-Share |
| With Instructor Self-Disclosure | 7.59(SD = 1.86) | 8.05(SD = 1.81) |
| Without Instructor Self-Disclosure | 6.10(SD = 1.94) | 6.44(SD = 2.08)
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A 2 x 2 (Instructor Self-Disclosure/No Disclosure x Pair-Share/No Pair-Share) repeated-measures analysis of variance of the combined mid-term exam scores resulted in a significant main effect for the variable instructor self-disclosure/no disclosure, F(1, 186) = 69.22, p < .001. The magnitude-of-effect estimate indicated a moderate effect, h2 = .27. Exam performance was better when lectures included instructor self-disclosure.
There was also a significant main effect for the pair-share/no pair-share variable, F(1, 186) = 4.73, p < .05. However, exam performance was better when lectures did not include pair-share experiences. The estimate of the magnitude of effect indicated this effect was small, h2 = .02. The instructor self-disclosure/no disclosure by pair-share/no pair-share interaction was not statistically significant, F(1, 186) = .09, p > .05.
Discussion
The instructor's providing personal examples of concepts presented in lecture improved retention of lecture material. Exam questions from lectures with instructor self-disclosure were answered correctly more often than were exam questions from lectures that had not included such examples. This result agrees with those of Wollen, Quackenbush, and Hamlin (1985) for textbook material: Providing examples improves student understanding and later exam performance. On the other hand, my primary focus in doing this study was to look at self-referencing. I added the variable of instructor self-disclosure primarily as a way to model self-referencing for students.
Thus, I did not evaluate the parameters of examples an instructor might provide. I did not include in this study whether these examples work best because they are humorous, for example, or whether personal examples work better than simple illustrative examples, though these questions may be important to look at in future studies. Given the results of Goldstein and Benassi (1994), I thought instructor self-disclosure might help establish a positive classroom atmosphere, but was surprised to find its effect on retention was as prominent as it was.
Students apparently find what they called "gossip" (stories about their instructor's experiences with family and friends) not only entertaining, at least according to their comments on student evaluations at the end of the quarter, but also worth remembering. Tannen (1990) believes women are especially attuned to such personal information, employing gossip as a means of establishing a personal connection. With a female instructor and a predominately female class, perhaps such information was particularly salient. With so few males in the class, I did not include gender as a variable; however, it may be worth considering in future studies. In any case, apparently gossip can be educational.
A possible alternative explanation revolves around the "memory load" required of students for each lecture condition. Though all class meetings were 90 minutes long, the amount of information covered in a class meeting may not have been equivalent. If, for example, one could measure the number of facts presented per class, lectures that presented concepts alone, without instructor's personal examples, could cover more material than lectures in which the instructor also took class time to give examples from personal experiences.
Superior exam performance for lectures with instructor self-disclosure might then be due to the decrease in memory load. Since less material was covered, there was less to be recalled. This explanation, however, is unlikely, given the overall pattern of the results. Additional class time was also required for pair-share experiences. A memory load explanation would predict that lectures that included both pair-share and instructor self-disclosure would not be able to cover as many facts and would have the smallest memory load. Yet exam performance did not reflect an advantage for this lecture condition.
I did not find support for the hypothesis concerning the positive effects of self-reference on recall of lecture material. Contrary to the findings of Dorr, Dill, Anderson, and Heppner (1996), exam performance was better on questions from lectures without student pair-share activities, than on questions from lectures with pair-share. Pair-Share decreased rather than aided recall. This result was both a surprise and a disappointment. Hartlep and Forsyth (2000) found self-reference improved students' retention of textbook material. I was searching for ways to get students to make self-reference connections more often and in different learning environments, and pair-share seemed a relatively efficient technique for classroom use. However, the result was the reverse of what I expected.
One possibility is that students did not take the pair-share opportunities seriously. If they regarded them as simply breaks from the lecture routine and a chance to chat with fellow students, rather than as learning experiences, or aids to recall, they may not have paid them much attention. They did not bother to store in memory what they thought was casual conversation. Dorr, Dill, Anderson, and Heppner (1996) asked their students to write out their thoughts on a worksheet before they shared them with another student in class. The worksheet may have increased the students' awareness of the seriousness of the task. It also gave students a written record of their thoughts to keep with class notes, and may be the critical element in the success of the pair-share technique.
A second possibility involves what Dorr, Dill, Anderson, and Heppner (1996) point out is a potential pitfall of the pair-share technique: belief perseverance. Students who held mistaken beliefs about what was covered in lecture, and those who had misunderstood, might further elaborate their error in discussion with their peers—the blind leading the blind, as it were. In such a situation, the pair-share technique might actually weaken exam performance, particularly if students with mistaken beliefs can convert their peers to an erroneous way of thinking. Their pair-share experiences are recalled but do not help on exams.
Further study is needed to clarify the differing results with the use of pair-share. There may be other ways to encourage self-reference that would work more reliably. In the meantime, instructor self-disclosure is clearly useful to students' understanding of concepts presented in my class lectures. Gossip is memorable.
References
Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (1991). Personalization and active learning in the large introductory psychology class. Teaching of Psychology, 18, 68-74.
Charlesworth, J. R. Jr., & Slate, J. R. (1986). Teaching about puberty: Learning to talk about sensitive topics. Teaching of Psychology, 13, 215-217.
Dorr, N., Dill, K, E., Anderson, K.B., & Heppner, M. J. (1996, June). Assessing the utility of the think-pair-share teaching technique. Poster presented at the annual American Psychological Society Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, San Francisco, CA.
Goldstein, G. S., & Benassi, V. A. (1994). The relation between teacher self-disclosure and student classroom participation. Teaching of Psychology, 21, 212-217.
Hartlep, K. H., & Forsyth, G. A. (2000). The effect of self-reference on learning and retention. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 269-271.
Junn, E. N. (1989). "Dear Mom and Dad": Using personal letters to enhance students' understanding of developmental issues. Teaching of Psychology, 16, 135-139.
Lawson, T. J. (1994). The media assignment: Enhancing psychology students' ability to apply their knowledge of psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 21, 157-159.
Lord, C. G. (1980). Schemas and images as memory aids: Two modes of processing social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 257-269.
McAdam, D. (1987). Bringing psychology to life. Teaching of Psychology, 14, 29-31.
Polyson, J. A. (1983). Student essays about TV characters: A tool for understanding personality theories. Teaching of Psychology, 10, 103-105.
Symons, C. S., & Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371-394.
Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: Morrow.
Wollen, K. A., Quackenbush, R. L., & Hamlin, C. K. (1985). The use of literal and applied test questions to assess understanding of concepts. Teaching of Psychology, 12, 136-139.
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