Northwest Missouri State University

Staff News

Nov. 13, 2007

Drs. Doug Dunham and April Haberyan

"The Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences" recently published research by Dr. Doug Dunham, associate professor of psychology, sociology and counseling, and Dr. April Haberyan, assistant professor of psychology, sociology and counseling, titled "Collaborative Test-taking: Memory Enhancement or Grade Inflation?"

The paper resulted from research in which Dunham and Haberyan studied whether collaborative testing improves longer-term retention of course material.

Students in a biological psychology class chose to work alone or in pairs on three of six examinations. All students took the comprehensive final exam alone. The results indicated that longer-term retention of information did not improve significantly in collaborators, but that collaboration did improve the collaborators' performance on the three regular exams. 

Return to Previous Page