Teaching methodologies: knowledge acquisition and retention

In studying the curriculum of a nursing program, knowledge acquisition and retention by nursing students is a primary concern of nursing instructors. The purpose of this study was to determine if a lecture which stimulated several senses would significantly increase knowledge acquisition and retention compared to lectures that stimulate only the auditory sense. Forty-three, junior year, diploma nursing students who had essentially the same clinical experience were the subjects randomly assigned to either Group A or B for this study. Group A (control group) attended a formal lecture on "Spinal Cord Injuries" which stimulated only the auditory sense. Group B (experimental group) attended a lecture on the same subject which stimulated the auditory, visual, and tactile senses. A pretest was given to evaluate the knowledge base prior to the lecture, a posttest was given immediately after the lecture to evaluate initial knowledge acquisition, and a retention test was given three weeks later to evaluate amount of knowledge retained. Students attending the multimodal lecture demonstrated a significantly higher retention test score at the .05 level although they did not demonstrate a significantly higher gain score from pretest to posttest.