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.
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