Cold calling and web postings: Do they improve students’ preparation and learning in statistics?

Dan Levy

doi:10.14434/13091

Abstract

Getting students to prepare well for class is a common challenge faced by instructors all over the world. This study investigates the effects that two frequently used techniques to increase student preparation -- web postings and cold calling -- have on student outcomes. The study is based on two experiments and a qualitative study conducted in a statistics course that Masters in Public Policy (MPP) students take in their second semester at the Harvard Kennedy School. When used together, web postings and cold calling seem to increase the amount of time that students devote to reading before class by about an hour. This effect is both statistically and practically significant. However this increase in pre-class reading did not translate into increased learning (measured by average test scores on the midterm exam). Neither of the two techniques seems to be better than the other one at increasing reading time, test scores, and other student outcomes.

Highlights

Getting undergraduate and graduate students to read for class is often difficult (i.e. McKeachie & Svinicki, 2010)
This paper reports on a study conducted to find out how effective these methods were in improving student outcomes in a Masters’ in Public Policy (MPP) statistics course taught at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) at Harvard University
The key results of the two experiments were: (1) Web Postings and Cold Calling had a positive effect on the amount of time students read before class but not on academic performance; (2) When tested against each other, neither of the two methods (Web Posting and Cold Calling) came out on top in terms of improving any of the key outcomes

Summary

Introduction

Getting undergraduate and graduate students to read for class is often difficult (i.e. McKeachie & Svinicki, 2010). Research has documented the difficulty students have in transferring knowledge learned in a particular context to new problems and settings (Bransford et al, 2000) This difficulty can be acute with statistics textbooks, as these resources often present material in ways that are quite different from the style and substance of the rest of the course. Web postings use modern technology -- the course management platforms common in most institutions of higher education -- to facilitate a long-standing practice of having students answer questions about the assigned reading in advance of coming to class (Chance et al, 2007). The assignments ask students what they have found most confusing in the readings The students post their answers through the course site in advance of class, giving the instructor the opportunity to read the responses before class. The students’ posts, and their related participation in class, are graded to incentivize compliance

Methods

Results

Conclusion