Re: Homework

[ron greene <rgreene@UNO.EDU>]

    In his interesting discussion about homework and other things, John Clement makes
the statement that

> This JIT or Just in Time pedagogy has shown good gain, and can be considered
> to be an extension of conventional pedagogy.

I find that curious in light of the later statement:

> I have no quibbles with alternate methods of teaching as long as careful
> objective measurements are being used.  Unfortunately most teaching does not
> involve such methods to gauge its effectiveness.

So far as I have been able to ascertain, through reading, as well as through asking
questions of the JIT proponents at AAPT meetings, there has not been careful testing
of the effect of JIT.  It seems to be always used in conjunction with interactive
in-class techniques.  How can one conclude, then, that the JIT component had any
effect whatsoever?



With regard to homework, he said in an earlier post

> > Homework certainly can have some effect, but it is small compared to the PER labs.

As I have mentioned on this list before, as well as in a (Sept 2001) TPT article that
does shown some "objective measurements of how better" [learning] "resulted from the
reported activity", I found effects in three classes from web-based homework
comparable to (not small compared to) interactive engagement classes.  Additional
experiments are currently underway by independent instructors to see if these results
are reproduceable (?) by others.

My suspicion is that effects of well designed homework activities (with immediate
feedback) will be significantly additive to those of IE in-class work, but it makes no
sense to test it with IE techniques until I am able to convince some core of people
that homework can be effective without in-class IE -- otherwise, it's too easy to
claim that any effect seen is coming from the in-class IE.

            ron greene