Engendering student retention of course prerequisite material in a web world

This paper argues that the personal retention of technical vocabulary and concepts (remembering) is as important in a web-based learning environment, where students have "instant" access to archived knowledge, as it was in the pre-web world. The paper provides two rationales in defense of this view. The first rationale is based on a core metaphor that draws parallels between a CpE/EE (ECE) technical "civilization" and a societal civilization. The second rationale argues directly from the first level of Bloom\´s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain that remembering cannot be discarded from the educational process. While the web-based environment does not eliminate the need for personal memory, it does provide a challenging environment for engineering educators trying to convince students that remembering is necessary. The paper addresses this challenge and concludes with a table of specific action items that may be used to improve technical content retention. These are based on three broad strategies: 1) knowing informs doing; 2) information retention is essential to engineering practice; 3) the transient nature of retained information can be controlled and compensated.