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In her POD post of 12 Aug 2003 13:28:26-0600 titled "Re: Monster
Classes," Lynn Sorenson wrote:
"I'm both snickering and sighing at the idea that 150 students is
thought of as a 'monster(-sized) class' elsewhere. Here at BYU, at
the OSU, at Texas-Austin, at UC-Berkeley and at soooooo many
campuses, some faculty would 'kill' to be assigned to teach such a
SMALL class as 150. We have one auditorium/classroom that seats
close to 1,000; it is booked nearly every period of the day.
Great minds run in the same direction. In STLHE-L posts of:
1. 12 Aug 2003 14:18:04-0600, Margo Husby Scheelar of the Univ. of
Calgary wrote:
"A 'monster class' of 150? That would be a small group for those of
us who have anywhere from 325-1000."
2. 13 Aug 2003 14:55:51+1000, Valerie Powell wrote:
"Here at the University of Queensland we have classes of over 1000
students in some cases."
I suspect that it's unlikely that much substantive learning of
conceptually difficult subjects (as opposed to rote memorization) can
occur in lecture classes of 500 or more students.
Unfortunately, there's little evidence to support the above suspicion
because most universities mistakenly depend almost exclusively on
student evaluations of teaching (SET's) (Hake 2002a). and faculty
course exams (Hake 2003c) to gauge the cognitive impact of courses
The lessons from the physics education reform effort (Hake 2002b) are
generally ignored in the Psychology/Education/Psychometric (PEP)
community. But the PEP's are in good company - the same can be said
for the prestigious U.S. National Research Council's (NRC's)
"Committee on Undergraduate Education" (CUSE) as indicated in Hake
(2003a,b,c).
In particular, Lesson #3 has had near zero, or even negative impact,
on psychology, education, psychometric, and NRC specialists:
Lesson #3: "High-quality standardized tests of the cognitive and
affective impact of courses are essential for gauging the relative
effectiveness of non-traditional educational methods."
In Hake (2002b) I wrote:
"As indicated in the introduction, so great is the inertia of the
educational establishment (see Lesson #13) that three decades of
physics-education research demonstrating the futility of the
passive-student lecture in introductory courses were ignored until
high-quality standardized tests that could easily be administered to
thousands of students became available. These tests are yielding
increasingly convincing evidence that interactive engagement methods
enhance conceptual understanding and problem solving abilities far
more than do traditional methods."
I propose a possible test to awaken SET-self-satisfied universities
to the fact that classes of 500 or more students result in relatively
small gains in the understanding of conceptually difficult subjects:
1. At any large-enrollment engineering school where a calculus-based
introductory physics covering Newtonian mechanics is required of all
students, and the traditional recipe labs are utilized, schedule such
a course for the over-500-student lecture halls.
2. Pre/post test the students in such courses (enrollments of 500 or
more that employ recipe labs) using the valid and consistently
reliable "Force Concept Inventory" [Hestenes et al. (1992)].
3. Compare the average normalized gain <g> results with national
norms [Hake (2002b)]. Here the normalized average gain <g> is just
the ACTUAL average gain [%<post> - %<pre>] divided by the MAXIMUM
possible average gain [100% - %<pre>]. For a discussion of the
half-century-old normalized gain (unknown to most PEP's) see Hake
(2002b).
Based on lessons from the physics education reform effort, I shall
predict average normalized gains <g> about equal to the 0.2
characteristic of traditional passive-student lectures, even
regardless of:
(a) any attempted lecture use of interactive engagement methods such
"Peer Instruction" [Mazur (1997), Crouch et al. (2001), Fagen et al.
(2002)] or "Just in Time Teaching" [Novak et al. (1999)].
(b) above average or even superlative student evaluations.
Considering the monumental inertia of the higher education system, I
shall not hold my breath while waiting for the above test to actually
take place.
"The academic area is one of the most difficult areas to change in
our society. We continue to use the same methods of instruction,
particularly lectures, that have been used for hundreds of years.
Little scientific research is done to test new approaches, and little
systematic attention is given to the development of new methods.
Universities that study many aspects of the world ignore the
educational function in which they are engaging and from which a
large part of their revenues are earned."
Richard M. Cyert, former president of Carnegie Mellon Univ. in
"Problem Solving and Education: Issues in Teaching and Research," ed.
by D.T. Tuma and F. Reif (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1980)
Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort."
Conservation Ecology 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/art28>. "Conservation Ecology," is
a FREE "peer-reviewed journal of integrative science and fundamental
policy research" with about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Hake, R.R. 2003a. "NRC's CUSE: Oblivious of the Advantage of Pre/Post
Testing With High Quality Standardized Tests?" post of 25 Jul 2003
13:07:23-0700 to ASSESS, Biopi-L, Chemed-L, EvalTalk, PhysLrnR, and
POD; online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=pod&O=D&P=17145>.
Later distributed to AERA-D and STLHE-L.
Hake, R.R. 2003b. "Re: Designing Pretests," post of 31 Jul 2003
13:38:21-0700 to ASSESS, Biopi-L, 6, EvalTalk, PhysLrnR, and POD;
online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=pod&O=D&P=22283>.
Later sent to AERA-D, STLHE-L, Phys-L, Physhare, AP-physics, and
Biolab.
Hake, R.R. 2003c. "NRC's CUSE: Stranded on Assessless Island?" post
of 3 Aug 2003 12:52:16-0700 to ASSESS, Biopi-L, Chemed-L, EvalTalk,
PhysLrnR, and POD; online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308&L=pod&F=&S=&P=391>.
That post was later sent to AERA-D, STLHE-L, Phys-L, and Biolab.
Halloun, I., R.R. Hake, E.P Mosca, D. Hestenes. 1995. Force Concept
Inventory (Revised, 1995); online (password protected) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. (Available in English,
Spanish, German, Malaysian, Chinese, Finnish, French, Turkish, and
Swedish.)
Hestenes, D., M. Wells, & G. Swackhamer, 1992. "Force Concept
Inventory." Phys. Teach. 30: 141-158; online (except for the test
itself) at <http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>.
See also Halloun et al. (1995) for the slightly revised 1995 version.
Mazur, E. 1997. "Peer instruction: a user's manual." Prentice Hall;
online at <http://galileo.harvard.edu/>.