“Chunking” Semester Projects: Does it Enhance Student Learning?

Abstract

Students, like everyone else, have limited memory with which to take in, process, store, and recall information. In this paper, this limitation is examined within the context of a semester project in which students were tasked to complete a network design project based on a case with which they were presented. Two back-to-back semesters in which the project was first presented as a single, overall semester project that was compared against the second semester in which individual project deliverables were due throughout the semester were compared. Results and implications are discussed.