A Comparative Analysis of Achievement in Three and Five Hour Sections of Freshman English

Abstract

SINCE THE FALL of 1949 the faculties of Drake University have di rected much time and energy to a critical study and evaluation of its pro gram of general education. This overall study was organized into a long-term cooperative research program that has passed through sever al major phases to date (3). In this study of the program and its objectives, considerable atten tion was devoted to the need for an increase in the breadth or scope of the program, especially in the Fine Arts area, either through the intro* duction of new courses or through modification of present courses. Par ticular attention was paid proposals which would increase the scope of the program without necessitating an increase in the proportion of student time currently devoted to this area and without reducing the ed ucational effectiveness of the already established courses. One proposal called for the introduction of several new courses, the time for these to be gained through a reduction in the amount of time devoted to existing courses. A series of studies was thus begun to de termine if the courses could be reduced in length without serious ly re ducing their effectiveness. A study of the freshman Social Science course (2) indicated that three hour sections of this course were not sig nificantly less successful in helping students attain the objectives of the course than were sections that met for five hours per week. The pres ent study is a report of an attempt to compare the achievement of two groups of students finishing a year's study in Freshman English, one group who had had three hours of instruction per week, the other, five hours. Freshman English, since its establishment in 1943, has been a five day per week course for which students receive four hours of credit. While original plans proposed the use of the fifth class hour per week for laboratory or independent project use, the course actually developed without this feature and has been a five clock hour per week lecture discussion course. For the purposes of this experiment, four sections of English 1-2 were scheduled during the 1951-52 academic year as three credit hour sections meeting for but three clock hours per week, while the remaining sections continued on the five hour schedule. Teach ing assignments were made so that each instructor assigned a three hour section was also assigned at least one five hour section, this in an attempt to control the factor of teacher effectiveness. Students were assigned to the various sections at random, each three hour section be ing paired with a five hour section meeting at the same hour.