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[Phys-L] Surprise, Surprise! Active Participation beats Lectures




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

...as reported in
<http://news.sciencemag.org/education/2014/05/lectures-arent-just-boring-theyre-ineffective-too-study-finds>

Brian Whatcott Altus OK Indian Territory