Abstract
Teachers commonly prepare for classes by summarizing the learning materials in plain language and presenting them as keywords to the students. The web version of Key Words Meeting (KWM), an education and training support tool, is an interactive learning system that uses ICT to electronically gather data on students’ memory retention rates of keywords that teachers input into the system. In this study, the relationships between word counts, parts of speech, and memory retention rates were examined. Data was collected through KWM for an undergraduate engineering elective course from 2014 to 2018. Results showed that memory retention rates were higher when main keywords, which act as titles, had lower word counts and when sub-keywords, which supplement the main keywords, had higher word counts. Morphological analyses revealed that memory retention rates were higher when main keywords contained combinations of nouns and when sub-keywords contained combinations of parts of speech other than nouns. Results suggest that different combinations of parts of speech and word counts affect memory retention. Further research on the characteristics of teachers’ keywords that yield high memory retention rates may lead to improved learning and memory for students in classes.
