My article this week is “Evaluating an Active Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: a Classroom Workbook Approach” and is found at http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v19n1/carlson.pdf. This article concerns the use of a different teaching approach for looking at active learning.
The authors point out that studies do not always support the idea that active learning improves performance, and in fact in some cases may hurt performance, especially among students who normally have high GPAs. The authors offer ideas on what may be causing this discrepancy, the first being that there is no uniformity in defining what constitutes active learning. They make the point that just making students do something does not necessarily mean there is learning; but only if the activities have focus the students one specific outcomes. But another idea that focuses on higher GPA students not doing as well brings up the idea that all students do not learn the same way, and these students may actually do better because they learn better in the more traditional teaching styles.
The authors conducted a study looking at the use of workbooks in teaching statistics. Using this method, students are provided a short lecture followed by completing the workbook for the rest of the class. The workbooks are not part of their measured performance, but do relate back to homework problems and exams the students perform later.
The results showed that performance improved significantly; that attitudes toward statistics improved significantly; and even students with higher GPAs improved over those who took the course in more traditional ways. Though the results are promising, the researchers did note some weaknesses in their research. One notable weakness was they used comparison groups rather than a control groups; meaning they compared the performance of their students to students from other universities rather than a group from their own school. Thus results could be tainted by difference in teaching methods, student make-up and other factors. In the end I found the use of workbooks an interesting idea, but one that may need more study to show its effectiveness.