(187) Impact of Mnemonics and Analogies in a Biochemistry Course on Students' Knowledge, Retention, and Application

Objective : To assess students’ perceptions of using mnemonics and analogies on knowledge retention, retrieval, and application in a biochemistry course.

Methods: Seven mnemonics and six analogies tailored to specific biochemistry concepts were taught in a Biochemistry course offered to first-year pharmacy students in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years. Students’ perceptions of the helpfulness of mnemonics and analogies in improving knowledge retention, application, and confidence when answering exam questions and lowering learning anxiety were collected through an anonymous survey at the end of the semester.

Results: Students positively rated that mnemonics’ use improved their knowledge retention (79.6% in 2022-23; 69.2% in 2023-24) and application (76.1% in 2022-23; 70.2% in 2023-24). Further, students reported increased confidence during test-taking (75.0% in 2022-23; 68.1% in 2023-24) and reduced learning anxiety (64.8% in 2022-23; 60.6% in 2023-24). Similarly, students strongly perceived that learning biochemistry concepts through analogies improved their comprehension (78.4% in 2022-23; 86.2% in 2023-24) and information retrieval (78.4% in 2022-23; 84.0% in 2023-24) during test-taking.

Conclusions: Students positively perceive that learning biochemistry concepts using mnemonics and analogies improves comprehension and knowledge retention and facilitates retrieval and application during test-taking. Future studies will investigate the effectiveness of mnemonics and analogies on students’ exam performance in the course.