Mean Gain Scores Research Articles

Effectiveness of microcomputer simulations in stimulating environmental problem solving by community college students

AbstractThis study examined the impact of microcomputer simulations on environmental problem solving by community college students. A subordinate question was also addressed: Was the test instrument, which was used to assess the outcome of the treatment, biased by reading ability? The quasiexperimental design used two intact groups of community college students and parallels an earlier study by Rivers and Vockell (1987). The experimental group was assigned three simulation modules that focused on lake pollution analysis, wastewater quality management, and population dynamics. The comparison group was not exposed to any simulations, and served as a quasicontrol to identify possible Hawthorne effects. Effectiveness was assessed by the Test of Integrated Process Skills (TIPS I and II). Statistical analyses were done with t tests, Pearson product‐moment correlation coefficients, and reliability coefficients. The experimental group showed a highly significant improvement in problem‐solving skills after treatment, t(33) = 4.42, p < 0.001. Subtest mean gain scores supported the hierarchical relationships among cognitive modes for transitional operational reasoners as reported by Yap and Yeany (1988). An analysis of the correlation between the TIPS I and Nelson‐Denny reading test scores indicated that the TIPS did not have a reading‐level bias for the subjects in this study. Informal and anecdotal observations described improvements in other problem‐solving skills which were not measured by the TIPS.

The effectiveness of creative drama as an instructional strategy to enhance the reading comprehension skills of fifth‐grade remedial readers

Abstract The purpose of this study was to measure the growth of reading comprehension skills of fifth‐grade remedial reading students after their exposure to a treatment of creative drama integrated with children's literature reading material. Three groups, each with 17 fifth‐grade remedial reading students, comprised the sample in this study. Group 1 read selected children's literature stories and participated in creative dramatic activities. Group 2 read and discussed, by traditional methods, the same children's literature stories as Group 1. Group 3 continued with their normal Chapter 1 curriculum during the treatment period. The groups were given the Metropolitan Reading Comprehension Test (MAT6) as pre‐ and posttests. Additionally, Groups 1 and 2 were given weekly criterion‐referenced tests. ANOVA showed that Group 1 achieved significant mean gain scores at the .05 level on the MAT6, whereas the other groups showed no gain from pretest to posttest. Analysis of the weekly criterion‐referenced test sho...

Effectiveness of a Personalized Fitness Module on Knowledge, Attitude, and Cardiovascular Endurance of Fifth-Grade Students: “Heart Smart”

The effectiveness of a Personalized Fitness Module was compared to a Traditional Fitness Unit, both of which were designed to develop knowledge, behavioral skills, fitness and positive attitudes. 95 students in Grade 5 and from intact physical education/health classes within two public schools participated in a seven-week cardiovascular fitness program. The experimental group of 48 participated in the personalized and noncompetitive fitness module. The control group of 47 participated in the traditional unit, a teacher-centered fitness module. Students received a total of 14 55-min. lessons over seven weeks. Pre- and posttest measurements included the Superkids-Superfit Knowledge Test, the Children's Attitudes Toward Physical Activity Inventory, and the one-mile run/walk. Data were analyzed using group mean gain scores on eight dependent variables (knowledge, six subscales of attitude, and one-mile run/walk) followed by a multivariate analysis of variance. A significant difference between groups led to a discriminant function analysis as a post hoc test. Findings indicated that the use of the personalized unit can substantially improve one-mile run/walk time. The use of modules of this type in health and physical education programs may promote life-long exercise patterns and fitness.

Retest Effects on Standardized Structure-of-Intellect Ability Measures for a Sample of Elementary School Children

Within the context of a battery of 26 multifactor aptitude tests entitled the Structure of Intellect Learning Abilities Test and developed from the structure-of-intellect conceptual framework, the major purpose of this study was to examine for a sample of more than 2,000 elementary school children the nature and degree of relationship of retest effects from a first testing (pretest) to a second testing (posttest) two to four weeks later to (a) grade level (age), (b) gender, (c) general ability level, and (d) use of an identical or parallel form on the posttest in relation to the pretest. The gain scores in standard score form on the 26 SOI-LA subtests constituted the 26 dependent variables. A four-way univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) on unique effects (i.e., a simultaneous solution) was conducted. Results suggested the following conclusions. Younger children tended to show greater mean gain scores than older children. Gender appears to be unrelated to score changes upon retesting. Greater mean gain scores were evident for low ability children than for high ability children. Greater score gains may be expected on ability measures when the posttest is the same test form as the pretest than when the posttest is a parallel test form.

Long-Term Effects of Creativity Training with Middle School Students

The effectiveness of a creativity-training program was investigated. Two matched eighth-grade classes of high-ability students (N = 48) were chosen for the study. The experimental group spent three days and two nights at an outdoor school learning to use the Osborne-Parnes model of creative problem solving. There was no treatment for the control group. Just prior to the training both groups were tested, and six months after the training they were retested. There were four subtests: (a) datafinding, (b) problem-finding, (c) idea-finding, and (d) solution-finding, containing both divergent and convergent sections. Mean gain scores of the two groups were compared. On every subtest the experimental group outperformed the control group significantly, indicating that after six months the skills of creative problem solving had been retained.

Designing Instructional Formats: The Effects of Verbal and Pictorial Components on Hearing-Impaired Students' Comprehension of Science Concepts

This study compared the effectiveness of four different printed instructional formats on the comprehension of science information by 60 hearing-impaired students aged 12 to 22 with severe to profound hearing losses. The students studied one of four randomly assigned formats describing basic science concepts derived from a sixth-grade science textbook. Comprehension was measured by gain scores calculated from pretest and posttest scores. Results indicated that formats which featured highly pictorial content and simplified English produced significantly higher mean gain scores than formats with less pictorial content and more complex English patterns. Differences were noted also between male and female participants. The study has general implications for the design of instructional materials developed for hearing-impaired learners.

Effectiveness of Computer‐Assisted Instruction for Teaching Consumer Credit

This study tested the effectiveness of computer‐assisted instruction (CAI) versus supervised reading for teaching consumer credit to secondary school home eco nomics students and investigated the effects of students' IQ, grade point average, attitude toward computers, and familiarity with computers on amount of information learned by subjects taught by CAI. A random sample of 68 students, randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, was drawn from a popu lation of 10th through 12th graders in a large rural high school. Analysis of covari ance, controlling for differences in IQ and grade level, was used to test differ ences in mean gain scores of pretest, posttest, and second posttest. Results indi cated that the experimental (CAI) group learned more between pretest and both posttests than did the control group. Results of three stepwise multiple regres sion analyses indicated that student learning via CAI did not vary by IQ, GPA, attitude toward computers, or familiarity with computers, which suggests that CAI is an effective teaching method for teaching consumer credit with diverse types of high school students.

Students Learn Language via a Civilization Course—A Comparison of Second Language Classroom Environments

The primary goal of this research was to compare the improvement in the second language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing among fourth semester French students enrolled in a content course taught in French and similar level students enrolled in a traditional fourth semester French course where the focus was primarily on the teaching of the language itself. The research used a non-equivalent pretest-posttest design and the results were analyzed using an analysis of covariance to determine mean gain scores of intact experimental and control sections of fourth semester students on the MLA Cooperative French Test. Results showed significant improvement for the experimental group in three of the four skills (listening, speaking, writing) and in two (listening and writing) for the control group. When compared to each other, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the speaking skill while the latter significantly outperformed the experimental group in the writing skill. Attitudinal results showed a significantly more positive attitude toward the study of French among the experimental group. The study is important because it challenges the conventional assumptions regarding the way L2 skills are acquired and improved, and offers the student a valuable time and money saving option since he or she might be able to study a specific content while simultaneously improving L2 skills.

Effectiveness of a personalized system of instruction in an algebra/trig sequence at the college level

A pre‐test/post‐test experimental model was used to study the effectiveness of a personalized system of instruction (PSI) in the algebra/trig sequence at the college level. Data were obtained from 777 students who completed a course in algebra, pre‐calculus algebra, or trigonometry. Students were divided into control groups taught by the lecture‐discussion method with one instructor per section and experimental groups taught by a modified Keller PSI plan. Both groups used the same text and syllabus. Using an analysis of covariance controlling for GPA, the mean gain score of the experimental group was significantly larger than the mean gain score of the control group for algebra (p = 0.056, N=503). The results were not significant for the other two classes.

Learner Verification of Instructional Materials

Learner verification and revision (LV&R) is an empirical approach to increasing the probability that an instructional product will facilitate the learning it has been designed to transmit. The process aims to improve a product's instructional effectiveness incrementally during prepublication development, day-to-day postpublication use, and future revisions and editions. The process involves two interrelated activities: 1. Empirical and parsimonious investigations of whether the specific verbal and pictorial communications that constitute a given instructional material are, in fact, communicating to learners well enough for them to understand and to learn what the material is designed to teach. (This is done best by directly observing, testing, and interviewing small numbers of selected learners, using information from teachers, as needed.) 2. Use of this direct feedback from learners as a basis for making specific changes (revisions) in, (a) the content, format, method, etc., of the material itself (textual revision), and (b) the way the materials are being used (contextual revision). These investigations and revisions are not limited to the formative period of a product's life. is an extension of formation evaluation to a product's market life. While it is primarily the responsibility of publishers, may be, and is, carried out by teachers forced to make contextual revisions to make a product work with certain students. Therefore, contrary to the views of some of its advocates, and almost all of its adversaries, is not a means of proving to prospective purchasers that the product Rather, is a means of improving the extent to which an instructional product may be understood and used effectively by learners. The technology for proving that a product works-as well as or better than other products-is well established and broadly used by various developers and commercial publishers. It is also of limited, if not questionable, value. Validation is based on large-scale testing of a product in a representative sampling of schools. It usually entails a rather large financial investment (commonly viewed as a marketing expense) by the product's publisher. Because many commercial publishers refer to as LV&R, publishing validation reports as LV&R reports, they speak of as being too expensive. As a rule, studies report gains in group mean scores from pretest to posttest. These mean gain scores are, in essence, proof that the product works. Yet, if anything is proved by these expensive studies, it is that in any group of representative schools there is a sufficient number of high ability students who will learn enough from almost any instructional

The Effect of Dissonance and Arousal on Assignment Performance as they Relate to Student Expectancy and Teacher Support Characteristics

AbstractA field experiment was conducted with 230 fifth and sixth grade male Ss to examine the relationship of two sets of variables as they affect performance on an arithmetic assignment. The first set of variables was the Ss’ expectancy (positive or negative). The second set was the dissonant or consonant expectancy of the experimenter regarding the Ss’ performance. The effect of the coupled independent variables was determined by a pretest- posttest design. A one-way analysis of variance for the comparison of mean gain scores was performed. The dissonant experimental groups did not significantly improve. Comparison of independent proportions was significant (p > .05) indicating relationship of student level of arousal to task complexity in affecting achievement.

The Motivating Effect of Two Reinforcers upon Lower- and Middle-Class Fifth-Grade Children

This study investigated the effectiveness of praise and knowledge of results in increasing the performance of lower- and middle-class fifth-grade pupils on a numeral cancellation test. The effectiveness of the reinforcers was based upon the mean gain (loss) scores of Tests 9 and 10 over Test 1. Middle-class boys made significantly larger gains under the knowledge-of-results condition than under the praise condition. Under the knowledge-of-results condition, lower-class boys made significantly larger gains than lower-class girls. Other differences were insignificant.