Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Do more lectures improve student performance?

Yes, finds a new experimental study, but the authors interpret the effects as modest in size.  One group of students in introductory microeconomics got a lecture twice a week (what the authors call the "traditional" format), and the other group of students got a lecture only once a week.  All the students had the same access to online resources and the same wonderful textbook. (You can guess which one.)  The results:
We find that students in the traditional format scored 2.3 percentage points more on a 100-point scale on the combined midterm and final. There were no differences between formats in non-cognitive effort (attendance, time spent with online materials) nor in withdrawal from the class.