Freeman and a group of colleagues analyzed 225 studies of undergraduate
STEM teaching methods. The meta-analysis, published online today in
the/Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences/, concluded that
teaching approaches that turned students into active participants rather
than passive listeners reduced failure rates and boosted scores on exams
by almost one-half a standard deviation.
<http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131403&org=NSF&from=news>
"The change in the failure rates is whopping," Freeman says. And the
exam improvement---about 6%---could, for example, "bump [a student's]
grades from a B-- to a B."
Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering,
and mathematics
* Scott Freeman,
* Sarah L. Eddy,
* Miles McDonough,
* Michelle K. Smith,
* Nnadozie Okoroafor,
* Hannah Jordt,
* and Mary Pat Wenderoth
PNAS 2014 ; published ahead of print May 12, 2014,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1319030111