Abstract:

The problem:
Just like physical skills, cognitive skills grow rusty over time unless they are regularly used and practiced. This means that school breaks can have negative consequences on student learning. Indeed, by a conservative estimate, summer vacation sets K-12 students back by one month of instruction; that is, it causes them to lose one month of grade-level equivalent skills relative to national norms (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996). Although this “summer gap” effect has been documented for many school subjects, it is most pronounced for mathematics which requires a strong foundation of prior knowledge. And the summer gap effect extends into higher education too. We now know that having breaks between sequential closely related mathematics courses significantly lowers performance in the second course at the university level (van de Sande & Reiser, 2018). How can we bridge the gap between courses and stem the loss of learning over school breaks for students who have busy lives and do not wish to spend their breaks from school studying and preparing for the upcoming semester?

The solution:
The Keeping in School Shape (KiSS) intervention is a mobile, engaging, innovative and cost-effective program that was designed for the very purpose of helping students stay fresh on pre-requisite mathematics skills and concepts. Theoretically, the KiSS program draws on the well-documented benefits of retrieval practice – the notion that recalling previously material is a very effective way of maintaining cognitive performance (Roediger & Butler, 2011; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). The KiSS program embodies retrieval practice by sending students a multiple choice mathematics question daily via text messaging. The problems are chosen specifically to be skills that are requisite for success in the course following the break from school. After judging their confidence in being able to solve the daily problem and responding with an answer choice, students receive feedback on their response and access to a solution. Students are motivated to participate by donations to good causes for correct answers.

The results:
The first KiSS program, KiSS1.0, was delivered over the three month long summer break between spring and fall semesters for a single class of university students who were enrolled in the second course of an introductory mathematics course sequence. A second version of KiSS, KiSS2.0, was then designed to deliver the program to a larger student audience and to facilitate the delivery of the problems and feedback following responses. KiSS2.0 was tested over winter break, a period of three weeks, by university students who were enrolled in the second course of an introductory mathematics course sequence. We will present results regarding KiSS program participation patterns, confidence ratings, and accuracy. In addition, we will discuss interactions between these indicators, such as our finding that getting a problem incorrect seems to influence students at different participation levels in different ways.

The lessons:
The KiSS program can be used in various educational settings (such as high school) to help students maintain skills and stay engaged in various subject areas over breaks from formal schooling. Therefore, in addition to describing the KiSS program and presenting the results of KiSS2.0, we will outline the process for tailoring the KiSS program to meet the specific needs of other researchers and instructors.

Keywords:

Summer learning loss, retrieval practice, mathematics skills.