Abstract:

Research shows that mnemonics have the potential to enhance memory in many subjects in natural science, social science, and humanities, which require memorization. The usefulness of mnemonics at various levels of education is becoming increasingly important owing to the increasing body of knowledge, availability of interactive and AI-based tools, atrophying student attention and engagement with learned content in traditional classroom settings. In this paper, to enhance information recall with the aid of technological tools, we propose that students should be encouraged and taught how to effectively leverage mnemonics in memory-intensive subjects which require the learning of facts: the building block of concepts and knowledge. However, there is little research on students’ perceived utility and ease of creation of mnemonics in higher education and their willingness to accept technological tools that help them create effective mnemonics and engage in self-paced retrieval practice.

To bridge this gap, we conducted an empirical study among 122 students of a Canadian university to examine students’ perceived utility and ease of creation of mnemonics, their receptiveness to mnemonics-creation and retrieval practice tools, and the effect of gender and generator preference. Our study was underpinned by the expectancy-value theory, which describes how the performance of a task is influenced by an individual’s beliefs about their ability to accomplish the task (i.e., perceived ease of creation of mnemonics) and the value they place on the outcome (i.e., perceived utility).

The results of our analyses showed that overall, regardless of gender and mnemonics generator preference, higher education students are more likely to adopt mnemonics creation and retrieval practice tools than not given their perceived utility. Students perceive mnemonics in general as a valuable learning strategy to promote long-term memory, with over 80% of the participants using them in the past and over 75% (those who rated the 7-point Likert scales for the adoption variables 5 and above) willing to accept the proposed mnemonics creation and retrieval practice tools. Particularly, those who prefer professor-created mnemonics found mnemonics not very easy to create compared with the value (perceived high usefulness and effectiveness) they place on them. In other words, they find mnemonics more difficult and challenging to create than those who prefer self-created mnemonics. Female students find them more useful/effective and are more likely to adopt them and supportive tools than male students. Moreover, among students who like using mnemonics (90%), more preferred self-created ones (58%) than those who professor-created ones (42%). The findings provide useful insights into the perceived utility of mnemonics in higher education and students’ willingness to adopt supportive tools that facilitate mnemonics creation and information-retrieval practice to enhance knowledge retention and recall in the future.

To our knowledge, the paper is among the first to examine students’ mnemonics-related beliefs and willingness to adopt supportive interactive tools and the effect of gender and generator preference using the expectancy-value theory as a guiding framework. In future work, we look forward to developing user-facing educational technologies that support students and instructors in leveraging mnemonics in effective ways to promote long-term learning and knowledge retention.

Keywords:

Mnemonics, memory, cognitive psychology, pedagogical tools, educational technologies, gender, generator effect.